Plant Room Strip Out Edinburgh

Plant room strip out in Edinburgh and across the Lothians

The health estate, teaching and laboratory buildings, central offices and the energy centres behind industrial sites all send us Edinburgh strip out work. Old boilers and calorifiers, chillers, air handling sets, pumps and tanks, generators and switchgear are broken out and taken away, and the replacement is set down on its bases.

We work across Edinburgh and Leith, Sighthill, South Gyle, Musselburgh, Dalkeith and Livingston, and over into Fife. A plant list and photographs from the plant room door to the loading point bring back a desktop survey and a price, usually the same working day. A lot of it lands in an evening, a weekend or a shutdown, since the building carries on around it.

What a strip out covers

The old mechanical and electrical plant is reduced to pieces the route can take, rigged out and cleared from site, and the replacement comes back along the same route onto its bases. Your M&E contractor holds the programme and we book to it, with the pipework, the electrical work and the commissioning in their scope.

What comes out of an Edinburgh plant room

Plant	Where it sits	How it comes out
Boilers and calorifiers	Basement plant rooms	Burner, casing and insulation off, shell parted into sections
Chillers and condensers	Roof plinths and compounds	Lifted clear whole where the crane can stand, or reduced on the deck
Air handling units	Roof decks and internal rooms	Unbolted back to fan sections, coils and panels
Pumps, pressurisation sets and tanks	Tank rooms and risers	Toe-jacked off the plinth and rolled to the opening
Generators, transformers and switchgear	Energy centres and switchrooms	Slid onto skates and drawn out under a low-headroom gantry
Redundant pipework and support steel	Overhead and up the risers	Slung, then cold cut to lengths that turn the corners

The method follows the unit with the poorest way out, seldom the one that weighs most. There is more on our plant room strip out service page.

Get In Touch

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 Edinburgh

Where a building sits shapes the job as much as its use.

Under the Old and New Towns

Boilers, calorifiers and standby sets come up out of central basements, and chillers come off the roofs above them. Tenants stay put, so heavy moves go in the evening. See our HVAC page.

Chiller and generator changes out at Edinburgh Park and Sighthill

Rooftop chillers, air handling units and standby sets come off the business parks and trade estates on this side of the city, where there is yard room to lay the old unit down. See our industrial sector page.

Teaching, college and laboratory buildings

Air handling plant, chillers and laboratory services leave the teaching and research estate in the holidays, and the day students return closes it. See our education page.

Health buildings across the Lothians

Chillers, air handling units and boiler plant change over in buildings that never shut, so the new set is proven before the old one is broken down. See our healthcare and pharma page.

Leith, Granton and over the Forth

Compressor rooms, heating plant and standby generators leave the sheds around the docks between cargo movements, and Fife manufacturing buildings give up energy centre plant inside a planned shutdown. See our maritime page.

Access and planning for an Edinburgh plant room strip out

An Edinburgh strip out is priced once these are answered:

Where each unit comes apart. Boilers part at their sections, air handling units at their panel joints. How far down each goes fixes the heaviest piece, and whether a crane comes.
A building that keeps working. Access windows, noise limits, a lift booked out for us and a boarded route past the occupiers, set with the building manager.
What the floors on the route will carry. Skates load a few small points hard. Central floors sit over vaulted cellars in one street and on rock in the next, and the waterfront is made ground, so the slab is proved.
Off the roof, or down through the building. A crane reaching roof plant buys a machine and a closure for the day. Inside, the same unit buys lift time, floor boarding and extra shifts.
Street space and somewhere to lay the plant down. Setts, gradients and bus lanes narrow the options in the centre, so the traffic management and road closure goes through the City of Edinburgh Council, or the West Lothian, Midlothian, East Lothian or Fife council beyond it.

Before anything is lifted

Three sign-offs belong to other trades, each before our first cut. Your M&E contractor isolates the plant, drains it down, locks it off and confirms that in writing. An F-gas certified engineer recovers the refrigerant and issues the certificate. Where the refurbishment and demolition survey finds asbestos, a licensed contractor clears the space and certifies it.

All three carry their own dates in the quote, ahead of ours, and the quote sets out who covers what. Our crew then arrives to a room it can start on.

Postcodes and areas we cover

We cover every EH postcode, the Lothian districts and the towns beyond:

Edinburgh: Old Town, New Town, Stockbridge, Leith, Granton, Newhaven and Portobello
South and west: Marchmont, Newington, Morningside, Corstorphine, Sighthill, South Gyle and Liberton
The Lothians: Musselburgh, Dalkeith, Tranent, Penicuik, Kirkliston and Livingston
Wider area: Bathgate, Falkirk, Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, Haddington and Galashiels

We strip out plant rooms right across the UK.

Why Edinburgh firms choose Synergy Lifting for plant room strip out

Buildings that stay in use. Health, teaching and office buildings across the Lothians keep going while the plant comes out, on hours the estates team sets.
The method settled before the price. The way out and the split points are fixed at survey, so the price holds when the crew arrives.
Crane and rigging crew from one contractor. The machine on the street and the crew in the plant room are ours, and the same team takes the old plant away and lands the new one.
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

Work that runs alongside an Edinburgh strip out:

How a plant room strip out works

Send the plant list, the floor the room sits on, what replaces it, and photographs of the route out.
We survey, and that settles the way out and how far each unit is taken down.
Method statement, risk assessment and lift plan are written, with our dates placed behind the M&E contractor’s isolations.
The plant is stripped, rigged along the route and loaded away on our wagons.
The replacement is landed on its bases, levelled and handed over for connection.

Common questions

Our New Town plant room is a basement with no lorry access. How does the boiler get out?

It comes up to the nearest point a wagon can hold, in pieces sized for the stair or area steps. The approach is measured at survey and the sections cut to suit.

Can a college strip out in Midlothian finish inside a holiday break?

The survey answers that, working back from the reopening date. We say before you commit whether the break covers the removal and the new plant going in.

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 Edinburgh

Phone: 0131 608 0165
Email: edinburgh@synergy-lifting.co.uk

Tell us what the plant is, where it sits, whether a replacement is going in, with photographs of the plant room and the way out.

We also provide plant room strip out in Grangemouth, Glasgow, Dumfries and Newcastle. See all the plant room strip out locations.