Southern Colorado Teammates Complete Bell Tower and Electrical Upgrades for School
January 12, 2026 – Colorado Springs, CO — An Encore Electric team in Southern Colorado recently completed a bell tower project for Fountain Valley School, a college preparatory school in Colorado Springs. Prior to this project, Encore Electric had never built a bell tower, so this was a new and unusual challenge for the team. Despite the tight workspace within the tower and the accelerated project schedule, the team successfully completed the bell tower that will stand as a defining landmark on campus for generations to come.
Encore Electric completed all the electrical work for the Fountain Valley School project including adding a new electrical panel to the library and base of the tower, a new split unit, all lighting control, bell make up, and equipment installation at the base. By adding electrical components to the campus library’s existing system, the team powered the bell tower by connecting that system to the tower. This allows for the bell tower to be controlled by the switchboard located in the library.
“There’s a keyboard they have in their library, and they can play any song on that keyboard, and it’ll play out at the bell. For instance, they were playing the Harry Potter theme song the other day when Kailey [Lucky] was out there doing startups,” said Emily McCurley, the Encore Electric project manager for the job. “This is a pretty neat and unusual project because it’s something we don’t do every day.”
Another unique aspect of this Fountain Valley School project is the lighting design. There are lights that run along the tower illuminating the bells, along with ground lighting that shine upward, making it a key focal point for the campus. While performing the electrical work, the team navigated around the tight, five-foot-by-eight-foot space in the bell tower. The team installed a 120/208-volt panel, lighting control, two 36-inch-by-36-inch control panels for the bells, and a disconnect in the small space. To ensure all the elements were installed correctly and were arranged in the most efficient way, Kailey Lucky, the superintendent for the project, had several workups she scaled to size to ensure the installations met all code requirements.
“We also had almost all of the electrical installed when they picked the tower, so making sure the electrical wouldn’t be crushed by the steel structure was stressful,” Lucky said.
The Fountain Valley School is built in an area that has a lot of water, so the team had trouble getting the soil to compact correctly. At one point during construction, Encore Electric teammates used bores so they could install their electrical conduit into the ground, but as soon as they got the bore into the ground, it began pouring water and flooding the area. The flooding created a pool of mud that took several days to fully dry out.
Another challenge the team navigated was delayed shipments of essential materials like the bell tower lights, which impacted the accelerated timeline even more.
“The timeline was very fast. We lost three weeks right off the bat due to scheduling conflicts, so we really had to plan everything out perfectly to make sure we hit the deadlines. The other trades on site were great and all of us really worked well together to get this thing done,” Lucky said.
Despite the challenges the team encountered, they successfully navigated unpredictable circumstances and successfully completed the Fountain Valley School bell tower which will have an impact on the campus for years to come.
“Overall, I think our team that we had was awesome and did a great job, I’m grateful to have them,” Lucky said. “This was a really cool project, and I couldn’t have done it without the team I had!”
