Copper Theft at Schools: Protecting HVAC and Electrical Equipment Outside the Building

A cool classroom on a warm afternoon and lights that come on in the morning are easy to take for granted, until the equipment behind them goes missing.

What two districts reported

According to KOLO, the Washoe County School District in Nevada said copper coils were stolen from the cooling system at Dilworth Middle School on the morning of December 6, 2024, and that repairs were expected to cost around $1.5 million. The district said there was also vandalism to the cooling system connections outside the gym building, and that because parts for the aging chiller were no longer available, a new unit had to be designed and procured. The district planned to discuss the repairs at its January 2025 board meeting.

According to NBC Bay Area, Vallejo City Unified School District in California said a copper theft between a Friday evening and Saturday morning in January 2025 cut power to Solano Widenmann Leadership Academy. District staff found it when they arrived to host a basketball competition, and the superintendent told families the school would likely be closed for a week while the electrical systems were repaired.

Why this equipment is hard to watch

Chillers, condenser units, electrical boxes and light poles can sit outside: behind the gym, on a pad by the parking lot, along a fence line. Few people work next to them, and damage may not be found until the next morning, by a custodian or a contractor. By then the question isn't only who did it, it's how long students will be without cooling or power.

Questions to ask about your sites

• Equipment map: where are your chillers, rooftop units, condensers and electrical rooms, and which are reachable from the ground?
• Hours: who is on campus between the last evening event and the morning custodial shift?
• Contractor storage: when new units are delivered for an install, where do they wait, and for how long?
• Cameras: do the cameras you already have cover the equipment yards and the back of the gym, or only entrances?
• Discovery: when staff find damage in the morning, how quickly can they find the right footage and the time it happened?

Where VOLT fits

VOLT is built to run on the cameras you already have.

If your cameras already see those areas, VOLT can use them too. When someone is in an area outside the hours your team has set, VOLT can flag it as Person detected after hours, and possible theft or vandalism as Possible theft or Possible vandalism. Every notification is human verified. Each alert can reach the people your team has chosen to notify, with the camera view and the location.

That way your team can spend less time worrying about the equipment and more time on students. To see how this works for your district, request a demo.

VOLT detects handguns, long guns, and knives that are visible to the camera.