The Altoona Water Authority recently hired Clark Contracting of Bedford to design a new HVAC system for the authority’s administration building on Chestnut Avenue for $55,000.

The building is 15 years old, and the heat pumps that provide both heating and cooling have a life expectancy of 10 to 15 years, said field operations coordinator Bill Calvert at a recent meeting.

Moreover, the system has been giving the authority trouble for years, starting in 2016 with small leaks, then six years ago with problems with a line that needed to be replaced in the parking lot, then five years ago with a burnt-out compressor, then two years ago with an air handler that needed replaced on the second floor, then a basement compressor unit that failed — issues that generally took a long time to fix because “the lead time for replacement parts borders on the ridiculous,” Calvert said.

“It’s time to do something,” he told the board.

The authority needs an engineering firm to design a new system because the current system is non-standard — as the building lacks a mechanical room for a large bank of equipment, relying instead on approximately 25 air handlers located in a wide variety of spaces, officials said.

Further complicating the issue are spaces that are now occupied that were not initially designed to be occupied, officials said.

Thus, it won’t be possible to purchase a “plug and play” system, one official said in answer to a question from authority board member Jack Speece.

Nor would it be possible to effectively “piecemeal” it, Calvert said.

Traditional heating and cooling systems may have lasted longer on average, perhaps because they didn’t do double duty like heat pumps, Calvert suggested.

The authority is working with a Greenville, S.C., construction management firm on the project.

The firm operates a program like Pennsylvania’s COSTARS cooperative purchasing.

The authority would be able to use the firm to handle the actual HVAC replacement project next year, but won’t be required to do that, as the authority will own the new system design, Calvert said.

The money is available to pay for the design, said controller Gina DeRubeis.

There’s no way yet to estimate the cost of the actual HVAC replacement, Calvert said.

The authority can’t afford to wait longer to correct the problem for fear the system will break down in winter and couldn’t be fixed for a long time, due to the long lead time for replacement parts, said electrical and IT coordinator John Driscoll.

Boilers are part of the system, but they’re only supplemental, Driscoll said.