Crews were once again out on North Burke Bradley Drive on Feb. 3 fixing a pipe that was damaged following a shutdown of the HVAC system in January. This comes less than 2 weeks after a break in the same area left the campus without heat on Jan. 23, and an earlier failure shuttered campus before the start of the spring semester.
“We had a break on our HVAC return line,” said Stacy Pinola, director of facility planning for San Joaquin Delta college, also noting that the Jan. 23 break had been the outgoing line.
According to Pinola, the pipes were nearly 30 years old and not particularly well insulated, which led to them expanding and contracting over time. This eventually lead to the breaks that caused the last two incidents.
“We’re looking to replace the steel line that’s breaking. We’re looking to replace it all so that we stop having these breaks,” said Pinola, who said that the work would be done over the upcoming five-day weekend for President’s Day and Lunar New Year holidays.
For the time being, the current break has been patched and campus remains heated.
The most recent break comes on the heels of a series of HVAC issues that begin in early January, the initial issue leading to an campus being closed for several days.
At a Jan. 20 meeting, the Delta Board of Trustees unanimously voted to approve an emergency exception for the bidding process for work needed to fix the HVAC issues.
Issues with the HVAC system were first reported in the Shima building on Dec. 30 with efforts to repair those issues leading to the discovery of a larger issue in the central plant on Jan. 2.
“It snowballed,” said Pinola. “The Facilities team assembled on Friday, Jan. 2 to make the repair only to find that we had a larger problem at the Central Plant and that the entire campus had no heat.”
The vote was an emergency ratification of a Jan. 15 agreement that approved a budget not to exceed $150,000 to be used from the capital projects fund to cover the repairs done by contractor, Iron Mechanical.
California public contract codes (PCC) state that expenditures over $50,000 are subject to a bidding process to avoid misuse of funds. Delta’s own administrative procedures set that number at over $15,000.
However, in the event of an emergency, PCC allows the bidding process to be skipped with superintendent approval and a unanimous board vote.
The repairs conducted on Jan. 23 and Feb. 3 did not exceed this $15,000 threshold and thus did not require an agreement to bypass the bidding contract.
While the vote approved the emergency repairs, the board questioned whether the work could assist in future plans.
“Since they’ve opened it up to fix things, can they look at it and help out with what we’re doing for the bond?,” asked Shelly Swanson, trustee for area 1, during the meeting.
Swanson highlighted plans by the board to prioritize HVAC improvements in legacy buildings on campus using bond money, which was decided in a meeting from February 2025.
“Anytime you open it up you see the condition of the pipe, that will let us know and we will let the firm for the HVAC project know,” said Augustine Chavez, vice-president of Administrative Services.
While Chavez said that the information might be used going forward the vice-president of Bond Programs, Daniel Banowetz, said that the scope of the bond project was not the same as the repairs.
“A majority of the scope is everything above ground that’s in the building themselves…To replace all these original parts and pieces, the piping in the walls, and the air handlers.” said Banowetz.
Banowetz added that they would also do an evaluation of the system as a part of the bond project.
Board members also noted that the HVAC system often experienced issues following the two weeks off during the holidays.
“This is not the first time that we’ve been unable to heat campus following Christmas break,” said Charles Jennings, board president and Area 4 trustee. “And my recollection is that it’s been lots and lots and lots of times.”
Banowetz confirmed that addressing issues like the one raised by Jennings would be tackled in the evaluation process.
