Forest Service hires Ketchikan firm to replace Sitka oil boiler with heat pump

The U.S. Forest Service has committed $285,466 to Ketchikan Mechanical Inc. to replace a 39-year-old fuel oil boiler in Sitka with electric resistance heaters and a heat pump, plus a new electrical service, according to federal spending records.

Nearly all of that money, $284,916, was committed when the agency placed the order Jan. 28. A March 5 change to work within the original scope added no money, and a $550 administrative change followed Thursday, Oct. 22. About $28,500 has been paid so far. The work is scheduled to run through Dec. 31. USAspending postings can trail actions by weeks.

The agency lists three goals for the replacement: retiring an obsolete system, improving zone control (the ability to heat sections of a building separately) and lowering annual maintenance costs. The record does not name the building.

Only small businesses could bid on the job; two made offers, according to the record. The order falls under a standing Forest Service agreement with the company for Alaska facilities maintenance and construction repair that runs from June 14, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2031. The Ketchikan company says it has done mechanical construction and contracting work across Southeast Alaska for more than 30 years.

It is not the agency's first heating conversion in Sitka. An earlier Forest Service project there turned an older office heated by an oil boiler and radiators into one heated by a wood-pellet boiler with heat-pump backup, High Performance Buildings magazine reported in 2018.

The City and Borough of Sitka's 2025 electric utility annual report estimates lower annual heating costs for air-source heat pumps than for electric boilers or baseboard heat, under its own assumptions. The federal record does not say how the new system will split the load between the heat pump and the resistance heaters.