Petersburg Pilot

Keith Chaplin

June 16, 2011

Plans to build a track and field between the community gym and Rae C. Stedman Elementary School are still in the works, and some exciting funding options have popped up according to the man charged with overseeing the project.

The project, a “Field of Dreams,” has been a discussion point for over a year between city and school staff as well as community members.

Presently, the high school track and field team practices on a gravel circle in the area of the proposed field, or athletes run on sidewalks or roads. Also, no track meet has ever been hosted in Petersburg because of the lack of facilities.

After a committee was formed to look into the idea of building a field, a community garden portion of the project is nearing fruition.
The project is part of a collaborative effort between the school and U.S. Forest Service, which donated money as part of an adopt-a-school program.

Getting funding for the rest of project has been a challenge, according to Gregg Kowalski, the elementary teacher heading up the project.

With politicians looking to cut funding from local, state and federal budgets, projects including a new field are hard to fund, Kowalski said. So other options have been examined, in fact, one of the best leads so far has been corporate sponsorship for the field, he said.

“There is an international corporation looking for some recognition through corporate sponsorship,” Kowalski said.

Kowalski said he had been in contact with a firm representing the corporate sponsor.

So far, the project has received some donations, including $500 from State Farm Insurance in Juneau.

Ryan “Zieak” McFarland, the City of Petersburg Parks & Recreation director has also started looking into the project.

During a trip to Washington D.C. to lobby on behalf of the Alaska Recreation & Park Association in March, McFarland said he advocated for grant programs that the field of dreams project could benefit from.

How heat pump works? | EEP

Distribution system and the earth connection. It is the basic building block of the GSHP system. The most common type of heat pump used with GSHP systems is a “water-to-air” unit ranging in size from 3.5 kW to 35 kW of cooling capacity. The water-to-air designation indicates that the fluid carrying heat to and from the earth connection is water or a water/antifreeze mix and that the heat distribution system inside the building relies on hot or cold air.

The heat pump may be an extended range unit, allowing lower entering fluid temperatures in heating mode and higher entering fluid temperatures in cooling mode.

All the components of this type of heat pump are in one enclosure: the compressor, an earth connection-to-refrigerant heat exchanger, controls, and an air distribution system containing the air handler, duct fan, filter, refrigerant-to-air heat exchanger, and condensate removal system for air conditioning. A typical packaged heat pump unit is illustrated in Figure 1 .

For residential applications and small commercial systems, a single heat pump unit will suffice. For larger commercial, institutional or industrial systems, multiple heat pump units are typically used in a distributed network connected to a common fluid loop.

In heating mode, the heat pump works as follows: heat from the earth connection arrives at an earth connection-to-refrigerant heat exchanger called the evaporator ( see Figure 2 ). On the other side of the heat exchanger is cold refrigerant in a mostly liquid state. The refrigerant is colder than the temperature of the heat transfer fluid from the earth connection, so heat flows into the refrigerant. This heat causes the liquid refrigerant to evaporate; its temperature does not increase much. This gaseous, low pressure and low temperature refrigerant then passes into an electrically-driven compressor. This raises the refrigerant’s pressure and, as a consequence, its temperature.

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