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Plant room strip out in Plymouth and across south west Devon
M&E contractors and estates teams in Plymouth usually ring us once the new boilers, chillers or air handling units have a delivery date and nobody has worked out how the old ones get out. The work is in health buildings, schools and colleges, offices on the waterfront and boiler houses on the A38 estates. Our crew dismantles the old plant, gets it up the hill and away, and sets the new units down level.
Enquiries reach us from Plymouth itself, from Estover, Plympton and Plymstock, from Ivybridge to the east, north to Tavistock and over the Tamar into Saltash. A plant schedule plus a few pictures of the route to the nearest level street gets you a figure the same working day. Evening and weekend shifts are normal, and so is working inside a shutdown.
What a strip out covers
Boilers, calorifiers, chillers, condensers and air handling units come out, and so do switchgear, transformers, generators, pumps, tanks and pressurisation sets. Each is taken apart until the pieces clear the route, and the dead pipework and support steel follow. New units come in the same way. Your M&E contractor runs the programme and does the pipework, wiring and commissioning.
What comes out of a Plymouth plant room
| Plant | Where it sits | How it comes out |
|---|---|---|
| Dead pipework and support steel | Risers and ceiling voids | Slung first, unbolted at the brackets, then cut cold |
| Boiler plant and calorifiers | Basement boiler rooms | Burner and casing away, shell quartered to the door frame, rolled clear |
| Chillers and condensers | Rooftops and yard compounds | Lifted off where the slope allows a standing position, otherwise reduced to modules |
| Air handling units | Roof housings and internal rooms | Coils, fans and filter banks drawn first, casing panels after |
| Pressurisation units, pumps and tanks | Tank rooms and risers | Cut free of the plinth and rolled to the lift landing |
| Switchboards, transformers and standby sets | Switchrooms and energy centres | Slid off the mounts, travelled out beneath a portal gantry |
Most of the planning goes into whichever unit has the worst route to the door, and that is seldom the heaviest one. See the plant room strip out page.
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Please leave a few details and a member of our plant room strip out team will be in touch to discuss your requirements in more detail.
Where we work in and around Plymouth
Five kinds of building send us this work.
Energy centres along the A38
Boiler houses behind the units at Lee Mill and Eurotech Park stop production with them, so the work goes inside a fixed stoppage. See our industrial sector page.
Switchrooms at Faraday Mill and Burrington
Transformers, standby sets and switchgear reach the end of a working life in engineering bays where the door, the headroom and the way to the yard differ unit to unit. See our power and renewables page.
Offices and mixed use above the waterfront
Roof chillers and basement boilers leave blocks trading below and let above, one goods lift and one bay shared by all. See our HVAC page.
School and college buildings
Boiler and air handling changes on the education estate go into the holidays, and the reopening date is the deadline. See our education sector page.
Health buildings across the city
Health buildings need their heating and cooling kept on, so the replacement is proven while the old units still stand. The estates team sets our hours. See our healthcare and pharma page.
Access and planning for a Plymouth plant room strip out
Worked through before a price goes out:
- Standing the crane and the wagons. A lift from the highway costs a carriageway or a parking bay. Plymouth City Council takes the closure, traffic management and lay-down together, and Cornwall Council does the same at Saltash.
- Taking units apart. Panel and flange joints decide the split, and the biggest piece coming out says whether a crane belongs on the job.
- What carries the load on the way out. A boiler on skates bears down through four small pads. Yards on the slopes above the water are stepped or made up, and pavements near the Barbican have vaults beneath, so slabs get checked.
- Stairwell or parapet. A crane costs hire but saves the days a stair carry takes. Hill streets have few level places to stand one, so we settle the position early.
- Whose hours we keep. The building manager fixes access windows and lift bookings, warns the tenants and sets the noise limits. Loud work lands after hours.
Before anything is lifted
We need three things from other trades first. The M&E contractor on the Plymouth job takes the plant off supply, empties it and padlocks it, and puts that in writing. Refrigerant has to be recovered, and the F-gas certified engineer’s certificate sets our earliest date. If the asbestos survey for the refurbishment finds any, a licensed contractor clears the space.
Give us those dates when we quote and we book the crane, crew and any closure after the last one. If the new units arrive before the room is empty, we agree at survey where they wait.
Postcodes and areas we cover
We cover every PL postcode and the districts around the city:
- Plymouth: city centre, the Barbican, Stonehouse, Mutley, Greenbank and St Budeaux
- Around the city: Plympton, Plymstock, Turnchapel, Estover, Ivybridge, Yelverton and Tavistock
- Estates off the A38 and A386: Faraday Mill, Burrington, Eurotech Park and Lee Mill
- Cornwall and the South Hams: Saltash, Torpoint, Liskeard, Totnes and Kingsbridge
We strip out plant rooms right across the UK.
Why Plymouth firms choose Synergy Lifting for plant room strip out
- Open buildings. Offices, teaching blocks and health buildings around Plymouth stay open through the job, with their facilities team in the plan.
- Fixed shutdown windows. Holiday shutdowns and weekend possessions have fixed ends, and the survey tells you whether the job fits.
- Our own crane and crew. The operator, riggers and wagons are all ours, and the crew that takes the old units out lands the new ones.
- Qualified and accredited. CPCS and NPORS operators, lifts planned to BS 7121, equipment inspected under LOLER and PUWER, SSIP approved, Constructionline Gold Member, certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, and members of the Construction Plant-hire Association.
More than plant room strip out
Other services a Plymouth strip out draws in:
How a plant room strip out works
- Share the plant schedule, say which floor the room is on and whether the street outside climbs or falls.
- A survey answers two things: which way each unit leaves, and how far it comes apart.
- Then we write the lift plan and RAMS, timed around your M&E contractor isolating the plant.
- The old plant comes out in pieces and goes on our wagons.
- Incoming units come up or down the slope, are bedded on their plinths and levelled for connection.
Common questions
Our basement plant room is on a street falling to the water. Can a wagon load?
More often from the top of the slope, with pieces winched up to a wagon standing level. We pick the anchor points and how the load is held at survey.
We are changing a chiller in Saltash. Does the Tamar crossing matter?
It shapes the vehicle plan more than the lift. The bridge and the ferry carry their own load limits, so the crossing is checked with the route. Any closure that end goes in with Cornwall Council.
Can the building stay open while the plant comes out?
Usually, yes. Most of this work happens in buildings that keep running, so the route is protected, the hours are agreed with the building manager, and the heavy moves go at night or over a weekend where that suits everyone. On a heating or cooling system the building cannot lose, the new plant goes in and is proven before the old plant comes out.
Who isolates and drains the plant before you start?
Your M&E contractor, with the isolation, drain down and lock-off signed off in writing before we cut anything. Refrigerant recovery belongs to an F-gas certified engineer and asbestos to a licensed contractor, so we plan our dates around both. We agree at quoting stage who is covering what.
Get a quote for a plant room strip out in Plymouth
- Phone: 01752 712 008
- Email: plymouth@synergy-lifting.co.uk
We need the plant list, the floor and whether new units are going in. Pictures of the route help us most.
We also provide plant room strip out in Exeter, Swansea, Cardiff and Newport. See all the plant room strip out locations.