Keeping cool at the Warren County Justice Center may be a bit easier in the future, thanks to a plan from Justice Center Superintendent James Marcrum that Warren County Fiscal Court approved Friday.

Marcrum said two of the five condensers on the building’s roof have gone bad after 20 years of use. His plan to fix the problem involves not replacing the air conditioning system but repairing it through a retrofit that will change how the condensers work.

Fiscal court approved Marcrum’s plan for a $171,660 retrofit, far less than the low bid of $880,000 to replace the system.

Marcrum said 83 percent of the repair cost will be covered by the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts, which leases space in the county-owned Justice Center. Only 17 percent of the building, Marcrum said, is occupied by county offices.

Chalking up the problem to what he calls the high-mineral-content “hard water” in this region, Marcrum said: “These condensers are large copper bundles. Those bundles have gone bad, and the manufacturer no longer makes them. We had no choice but to install a whole other cooling water tower or repair it using an air-over type condenser.

“In order to make this work, we’re retrofitting from an evaporative condenser to an air-over condenser. It’s a simple rebuild of what we now have. It’s completely redesigning the way it was originally made.”

Marcrum said he will purchase a condenser product made by Russell Coil that he hopes to have in four weeks. At that point, he will bring in a crane to mount the new air-over condensers. He expects an additional expenditure of $30,000 from the crane, welding supplies and other costs.

“We will try to work on weekends when nobody is around,” Marcrum said. “It will be days of work for our guys to get them hooked up.”

Fortunately, the existing system is functional enough that the Justice Center hasn’t been overly hot during the summer months.

“Three-fifths of the system is still working,” Marcrum explained, “so we managed to get through the heat of the summer. If you walk in the building, you won’t notice it.

“But if we don’t address it, you will.”

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