The county’s sheriff’s office is hoping to extend the life of some its critical electrical infrastructure with the installation of a new climate control system.

The Cass County Board of Commissioners approved a request from Kerry Collins, the county’s information systems director, to install a new $20,000 cooling and humidity control system inside the Cass County Sheriff’s Office jail security equipment room. The county will purchase the equipment from R.W. LaPine, of Kalamazoo, which submitted the lower of the two bids the county received for the installation work.

The room the system will be placed inside contains video monitors and jail control systems that allow the staff to securely supervise the jails. Due to the amount of heat generated from the equipment, the temperatures in the room regularly is higher than 80 degrees.

“It will not immediately effect the equipment, but it does impact the longevity of the equipment, how long it will last” Collins said. “With that amount of equipment there, we’ve been trying to reduce the temperature in that room.”

The challenge with attempting to cool the room with the existing unit is that there’s no way to do so without affecting the temperature of adjacent rooms, which are regularly used by employees. Therefore, Collins is recommending the purchase of a Liebert Environmental Control System, which is capable of cooling the space even when the main air conditioning unit isn’t switched on.

The county has purchased equipment from the Kalamazoo-based firm before, Collins said.

“It’s a similar unit to the one that we are using successfully at our 911 center,” Collins said. “It has provided us with cooling there, even when it is cold outside.”

The Sheriff’s office has had several equipment failure issues within their jail equipment room over the last several years, Collins said. While he’s not sure if the room temperature played a part in those issues, he recommended that the county take care of the issue before further complications arise.

“It’s better to spend $24,000 than to have to spend $350,000 to replace the equipment because we did not do our due diligence in providing proper temperature controls,” he added.