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A robot armed with a light and a television camera will soon be inspecting the air duct system at Shelton High School.

The robot will be searching for problems in the air-handling system of the nearly windowless 27-year-old high school.

According to school officials, it is vital that the air-handling system at the school be in good working order. If there is a power outage, they said, the school must be evacuated because there is no air circulation.

"The air handling system in Shelton High School has always been a matter of concern," said Timothy Walsh, a school board member and chairman of the board's Building & Grounds Committee.

School Supt. Leon Sylvester said, "If there is one issue that is on the minds of students and staff, it is the quality of the air."

Walsh, a retired Shelton High School headmaster, said he constantly heard complaints about the air during his tenure, which spanned from 1991 to 1997.

The complaints mostly have been associated with areas of the school being either too cold or too hot, Walsh said.

When the school was built in the mid-1970s, electricity was inexpensive, Walsh said, and the air system operated 24 hours a day.

But after the cost of electricity increased, the air-handling system would be shut off when people were not in the building in an effort to save money. That's when the majority of the complaints began to surface, Walsh said.

A consulting firm - Industrial Health & Safety Consultants of Shelton - has been hired to oversee the inspection of the duct system, which winds its way around the school building, which occupies seven acres.

"The video inspection system will light up the ducts," said Denise Deeds, senior consultant at Industrial Health & Safety Consultants.

The inspection should be completed by the end of May, Walsh estimated.

Inspectors will try to find out if there is moisture, dust or mold in the air ducts.

"Throughout the country there have been problems with mold" in buildings, Deeds noted.

The most publicized and extreme case of a mold problem in a Connecticut school is Fairfield's McKinley Elementary School, which was closed last fall after many students and staff became ill.

The Fairfield school will be demolished and another school will be built on the same site. The cost of the demolition and reconstruction is estimated at more than $20 million.

Mold also has caused problems at schools in Hamden, Woodbridge and Trumbull.

There is no evidence or suspicion that mold is in the air ducts or, for that matter, anywhere else at Shelton High school, Deeds and school officials said.

"It can be expensive [to clean the air ducts] so you don't want to clean it if it's not necessary," Deeds said.

The best and most cost-effective way to avoid cleaning the air ducts is to perform regular maintenance on the heating and air-conditioning system and filters, she said.

The process of cleaning the air ducts can include wiping them down and vacuuming them, Deeds said.

Walsh said cleaning the ducts could cost as much as $150,000.

This is the first time the school's air duct system will be inspected.

Until recently, air ducts were not inspected in most buildings, Deeds said.

"It's as much a health issue as a comfort issue," Walsh said of the inspection, which will cost about $3,000.

©Huntington Herald 2006