NSW:NSW schools toxic heater cost blowout

AAP General News (Australia)
08-01-2010
NSW:NSW schools toxic heater cost blowout

SYDNEY, Aug 1 AAP - Replacing toxic gas heaters in NSW schools could take up to a decade
and the cost will balloon way past the $170 million estimated by the state government,
according to heater industry experts.

In another blow for Premier Kristina Keneally and her Education Minister Verity Firth,
some schools will have to have their entire electricity supply upgraded, at a cost of
about $150,000 each, to switch heating methods, The Sun-Herald says.

The paper says it has also learnt that sections of the NSW public service believe the
government's bungled commitment to replace 55,000 heaters is a purely political decision
seven months out from an election and that unflued heaters - millions of which are used
in the US, Britain and New Zealand - are perfectly safe.

The debacle threatens to destabilise the leadership of Ms Keneally. Both teachers and
MPs from Labor's Left faction are furious at the treatment of Ms Firth by the Premier
after Ms Firth announced the replacement program without Treasurer Eric Roozendaal's approval.

For the past two decades, every unflued gas heater in NSW state schools has been made
and installed by just one company, Bowin Manufacturing at Brookvale.

Industry sources said the most likely alternative supplier to Bowin is the Japanese-owned
Rinnai, whose energy-saver model, at between $3000 and $4000 a unit installed, will cost
up to four times as much as Bowin's purpose-built DB90 Lo-Nox model.

The price for heaters alone would be $220 million - $50 million above current estimates
- but Ms Firth conceded last week that some schools, particularly heritage-listed ones,
could not be fitted with flued heaters and would need alternatives such as reverse-cycle
air conditioning.

AAP ao

KEYWORD: HEATERS

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