Cooper High School HVAC Controls and Drives Upgrade 2026
Cooper High School in Union, Kentucky started the 2026–27 school year with new controls across the heat recovery units that bring fresh air into the building: new DDC controls and safeties on all eight units, 24 new variable frequency drives, new hydronic control valves, and demand-controlled ventilation that sets the outdoor air by how many people are in the room. Prodigy delivered the project for Boone County Schools as the prime contractor on a competitively bid public contract, coordinating the controls, mechanical, electrical and air balancing trades. Much of the work was done on second shift and on weekends while the school was in session, with temporary heating and cooling brought in whenever a unit had to be taken off line, and the project reached completion in August 2026.
A heat recovery unit is the part of a school's HVAC that decides how much outdoor air comes in, and every cubic foot of it has to be heated or cooled before it reaches a classroom. The design for Boone County Schools, by the engineering firm Shrout Tate Wilson, put all eight units on new controls and one family of drives, and tied four of them to the building's actual occupancy.
Each unit now has a new three-way hot-water control valve, new refrigerant pressure transducers and temperature sensors, hardwired high- and low-pressure safeties, control of its enthalpy wheel, and a low discharge-air shutdown that protects the coils in winter. The 24 Yaskawa drives range from three-quarter horsepower on the enthalpy wheels to 25 horsepower on the largest fans, and every fan drive is packaged with a bypass so a drive fault does not take a unit down. The independent air balancer used the drives to set each fan's airflow, and took readings before and after the work. On four of the units, outdoor air now modulates with the carbon dioxide measured in the spaces they serve.
The result is a high school whose fresh-air units run from one set of controls, can be balanced and adjusted from a drive keypad or the building automation system instead of by changing belts and pulleys, and bring in outdoor air in proportion to the people in the building. For a district looking at older air handling equipment, it is a reminder that a controls and drives project can change how a building runs without replacing the units themselves.
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