After school ended we finally got the city building inspector to come by and take a look at the basement space that we hope will host the root cellar. He said roughly what I expected him to say: No Students. We will only be permitted to build this thing if it’s faculty only. But then he said some things I did not expect him to say. Specifically, we were not permitted to build walls within the 70’x30’ space. What? There’s no way I can passively cool a space this large to temperatures low enough to preserve food. No way. We would need an air conditioner, and then it may as well be a walk-in refrigerator. Boo. Why? Because of the sprinkler system. Each space would need its own sprinkler head. Gr.
I thought this was the end.
By chance I ended up in Tom Wood’s office (he’s the head facilities coordinator, the only other person on the tour with the building inspect
or), and he seemed to have an entirely different impression. He’s an architect, so maybe he sees opportunity where I road blocks. Regardless, he said, “oh yea, we can just add another sprinkler head for like $100 easy.” Oh… ok. “And we may as well cut the foundation so that the bulkhead entrance from the outside is really a standard-sized means of egress.” Oh! Um… ok! And as long as we’re cutting the foundation we may as well do everything necessary to bring it up to code for children to be down there as well. (And suddenly the sun was shining and happy rainbows broke out over the capitol building... as seen from the high school parking lot)
Meanwhile Tom has put together a line-item in the budget for constructing such a space, totaling roughly $15,000. He said it was mainly put in because the administration would need something to reject some part of his proposed budget, but nonetheless, it was in there. So I told Tom that I could definitely write grants to allocate the $15,000.
It seems I have an unexpected ally in Tom Wood! WOO HOO!
This year I will write grants. And probably next year we will build it.
Word.
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