Forest Service to replace 39-year-old Sitka oil boiler with electric heat and a heat pump

The U.S. Forest Service has hired Ketchikan Mechanical for $285,466 to replace a 39-year-old fuel oil boiler at a building in Sitka with electric resistance heaters and a heat pump, according to federal spending records. The job also includes a new electrical service.

The agency says the old system is obsolete and the new one will improve zone control, the ability to heat parts of a building separately, and lower annual maintenance costs. The record doesn't name the building but lists the work as repair or alteration of administrative and service buildings.

In Sitka, the electricity comes almost entirely from the city's Blue Lake and Green Lake hydroelectric plants. Diesel generators supplied 0.05% of the town's power last year, according to the city's electric utility annual report.

The same report estimates what it costs to heat an average Sitka home. At the utility's winter rate and March heating oil prices, it puts an air-source heat pump at about $1,025 a year, electric baseboard or a boiler at about $2,273 and an older oil furnace or boiler at about $3,176.

The estimates are illustrative and leave out equipment and maintenance. The federal record doesn't say how the new system will split the load between the heat pump and the resistance heaters.

Two companies bid on the job. About $28,500 has been paid so far, and the work is scheduled to finish by Dec. 31.

It isn't the agency's first heating switch in Sitka. An earlier Forest Service project there turned an old facility heated by an oil boiler and radiators into offices with radiant floors warmed by a wood-pellet boiler and a heat-pump backup, High Performance Buildings magazine reported in 2018.