Students helping with $2 million boiler project

Photo: Devin Conway

GETTING INVOLVED — Brandon Ronfeldt, a senior at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School, displays a draft of the school's rear parking lot outside of the Engineering and Architectural Design Program's classroom. His designs will help facilitate the transportation of materials for a Biomass Boiler scheduled to be up and running at the school in April.

OXFORD HILLS — The $2 million biomass boiler project at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School (OHCHS) is getting some help from a member of the student body.

Parts for the boiler have been arriving from Austria via Boston over the last two weeks and are currently being installed. Officials hope to have the boiler up and running in April. It is estimated to save the school district $120,000 per year on heating costs and allow it to keep the school warm using materials from local sources.

In the meantime, Brandon Ronfeldt of Harrison, a senior at OHCHS, has been drafting plans to reconfigure the school's rear parking lot to allow for the entry of trucks carrying wood chips for the burner.

His project started last year, before plans for the burner were official, as an attempt to help the school use the space more efficiently. His drafts accomplish that, fitting in more parking space while also providing a corridor for trucks carrying the new furnace's fuel.

The drafts Ronfeldt has produced were created using software that he learned through the school's Engineering and Architectural Design (EAD) program, in which he has been enrolled for the past three years.

Design is something he says he has always been interested in, and that he was allowed to explore further through the EAD program.

"I've always had a passion for design," says Ronfeldt. "This was sort of my first step, where it started."

Through the Oxford Hills program, he has also helped take measurements for a project on the Gingerbread House in Norway and drafted designs for improving a cemetery in Harrison. He says he completes two to three "big" projects like the parking lot diagram a year, and also helps out with several others.

Ronfeldt is very involved in the community, playing sports, volunteering with the Harrison Recreational Department, and mentoring an elementary school student at Guy E. Rowe Elementary School in Norway through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.

The work he's doing with EAD and the design skills he is acquiring, he thinks, will stand him in good stead in his future endeavors.

"I'm definitely interested in engineering in the future," says Ronfeldt. "But everything comes back to drafting."