Spread across 12 buildings and over 2 million square feet, the Van Buren School District is the bedrock of the Van Buren, Arkansas, community. Weekend football games, an award-winning marching band program, countless clubs and activities—it’s where the next generation comes to grow, both in and out of the classroom.

The school district is also just down the road from Rheem’s Fort Smith, Arkansas, manufacturing plant. So when some of the district’s schools—including Northridge Middle School and Central Elementary—needed new heating and cooling systems, Rheem was the first choice.

“You can ask any of my techs what brand they prefer working on, and every single one of them will say Rheem,” says Justin Lowder, owner of Lowder Brothers Heating and Air. “I presented the Van Buren School District with some models from Rheem and said, ‘This is what I think will work for you guys.’”

Danny Spears, director of maintenance at Van Buren School District, was more than happy to run with Lowder’s suggestion. “The Rheem product has been a great product to us,” he says. “We had already been putting Rheem in for about the last 10 years, so we were already familiar with Rheem, and we have enjoyed the product. Rheem being local, right across the bridge from us, made it very accessible to us to use Rheem products.”

Lowder and his team installed 277.5 tons of Renaissance ^™ and Resolute ^™ packaged rooftop units at Northridge and another 286 tons at Central Elementary before the school year. Thanks to the equipment’s direct replacement footprint, curb adapters were not needed, which cut overall project costs and improved install time and system performance.

“When you use curb adapters, it increases static pressure, which puts more pressure on unit to perform. When we don’t have to use curb adapter, we don’t have that obstacle to peak performance,” Lowder says. The units feature central controls that allow the Van Buren team to remotely monitor every unit and hot gas reheat with Rheem HumidiDry ^® , which was essential to the district.

“We have a challenge now where school districts are required to bring a certain amount of outside air—hot, humid air—and mix it with cool air. Having the hot gas reheat, we’re able to kick that on without overcooling the space, bringing humidity down and keeping comfort,” Lowder says.

Rheem HumidiDry uses an additional reheat coil inside the unit to achieve peak comfort. “When you cool air, moisture comes out of the air, but then it’s too cold for occupants to be truly comfortable. You have to reheat the air,” says Laura Meyerrose, Rheem Commercial product manager. “It goes over that heating coil to bring the air back up to comfortable heating levels.”

“You can control temperature and humidity independently,” adds Mark Ritz, director of commercial sales at Rheem Commercial. “You may be satisfied on temperature, but if you have a high humidity, the units will continue to dehumidify to make classrooms more comfortable.” HumidiDry is also more durable than other reheat solutions on the market because it uses the unit’s fan to modulate hot gas rather than a refrigerant metering device.

Hinged access panels and drain pans also make serviceability a breeze. “The Rheem unit is built like a technician designed that unit,” says Kerry Russell, lead HVAC technician for Van Buren School District. “The ease of working on one—there’s no other unit like it.”