Galesburg Reporter

The city council of Monmouth voted on a new heating system for one of their fire stations.

“But what's going on is we have two roof-mounted HVAC units of the fire station that control the heat and the cooling for just the truck floor alone. We've had some issues with those over the past years, pretty minor issues. But this year, we started having problems with them, not putting out the right kind of heat, one of them working one not, things like that. And then we started having issues with natural gas and carbon monoxide on the truck floor. What the technicians are telling us..is one system is having electrical issues and problems with the heat exchangers on it. And they're saying that that unit we should not use; it’s dangerous because it is putting out carbon monoxide and natural gas, etc., so we shut it completely down. The other unit, they were actually able to make a temporary repair to part of the earth to be able to supply us with a little bit of heat for the time being,” said Casey Rexroat, fire chief of Monmouth.

Rexroat spoke to the board on behalf of the fire department, explaining the reason behind the new heating system requested for Fire Station 1. The station currently has two HVAC units mounted onto the ceiling, and the department has had lots of issues with them recently and had to shut down one and temporarily repair the other.

The department talked with local contractors about new systems for heating the truck floor and got a recommendation for radiant heating, which can be done by putting tubes through the floor. This will be a much more effective way of heating as well since the bay doors get opened and closed constantly, and the heated air would immediately rush out. The new system would also be more economical because of this reason, and so the board did approve the project contract.

The fire department of Monmouth has been busy recently, getting called out to help another fire department to rescue some individuals and a fire in town that completely took down a smaller house, though the department was able to contain it and protect the neighboring houses which sustained only some melted siding. The department got almost 1500 calls in 2022 and plans to hold some training for firefighters and volunteers in January of 2023.