Perryville Goes 'Old School' With Heating. Almost.

The Perry County School District has been awarded almost one million dollars in stimulus grant money to switch to a wood-burning heating system.

The computer-controlled system will manage both a conveyor that will automatically feed wood into the furnace and fans that will control how fast it burns, according to an article in the Southeast Missourian.

Apparently, Perryville is going "old school" with its building heating, although I personally don't think it is "old school" enough. While the fuel might be "old school," the system itself is definitely "new school" and at the price, I don't like it.

Now some people might wonder why I should even care how Perryville heats their public school since I don't live there or have ever lived there. They'd be right. I am not an immediate stakeholder in anything to do with Perryville, but I care because that stimulus grant money is tax money, and therefore it is my money.

While I think it is a fantastic idea that they heat their school with wood, what's wrong with good old potbelly stoves? Do you know how many potbelly stoves the Perry County School District could buy with the $970,000 grant they're getting from the Missouri Department of Conservation?

1700, that's how many.

And that is not just for any generic potbelly stove, but a Vogelzang 200,000 BTU Potbelly Stove direct from Amazon.com and that includes shipping.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the Perry County School District doesn't have 1700 classrooms to heat so I bet that they would only need to spend perhaps a tenth of the grant money to buy and install a potbelly in every classroom rather than getting this high-tech computerized gizmo.

With a potbelly stove, there aren't a lot of parts that can break, just a couple of doors and a couple of dampers to adjust airflow. That's it. Even a first grader can troubleshoot the problems on a potbelly stove. They don't need to go to some fancy-schmancy HVAC training course to find out how to program a computer and which sensors can stop the whole system dead in its tracks if they malfunction.

No, with a potbelly in every classroom the Perryville public school system could expect decades of low cost heating with very little maintenance. Just clean the flues once a year and take out the ashes daily. That's it.

And on top of that, students would learn valuable life lessons like touching an active potbelly stove in the winter will cause a nasty burn and how to cut kindling with a hatchet and the best way to properly stack a cord of wood. For those who are curious, you turn every other layer 90 degrees to the one below it at the ends of the stack.

As an added bonus, rather than sending unruly children to the principal's office or detention, teachers could have them work off their indiscretions the old fashioned way with a sledge and wedges.

"Billy, I saw you throw that spit wad at Sarah. Out to the woodpile. I want to see a split cord of oak by the end of the day, mister, and it better be stacked properly when you are done."