Plant Room Strip Out London

Plant room strip out in London and across the home counties

We strip out plant rooms in London for hospital and health centre estates, schools, colleges and universities, office and mixed use landlords, and industrial sites with their own energy centres. We break the old plant down, get it out of the building and away, and seat the replacement, below a Westminster pavement or on a City roof. The M&E contractor runs the job and we fit round their people.

We cover the City, Westminster, Islington, Southwark, Hackney and Croydon, out to the M25 and into Essex, Kent, Surrey and Hertfordshire. Photographs and a plant schedule are enough to price from, with the quote back the same working day.

What a strip out covers

It covers the boilers, calorifiers, air handling units, chillers, condensers, tanks, pressurisation sets, switchgear, transformers and standby generators, and the pipework between them. Each piece is cut down to what its route will carry. If new plant is going in, the same crew brings it in and levels it.

What comes out of a London plant room

Plant	Where it sits	How it comes out
Chillers and condensers	Roof slabs, podiums and compounds	Craned off where the street gives a standing position, or split and taken down inside
Air handling units	Roof decks and internal plant rooms	Unbolted panel by panel
Boilers and calorifiers	Ground floor and basement plant rooms	Burners and doors off, shell split to the opening, skated out
Tanks, pumps and pressurisation kit	Basements, tank rooms and risers	Lifted off the plinth onto skates and rolled clear
Switchgear, transformers and standby sets	Energy centres and basement switchrooms	Gantried out under a low ceiling on a protected route
Redundant pipework and support steel	Plant rooms, risers and ceiling voids	Cold cut to lengths two people can carry

The worst few metres of the route decide the method, wherever the weight happens to sit. Our plant room strip out service page has the detail.

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 London

The buildings our London plant room work comes from:

Roof plant and basements across the central boroughs

Chillers, generators and air handling units come off the roofs and out of the basements while the floors between stay let, the largest share of our London work. We share the loading bay and work to night noise limits. See our HVAC page.

Data halls on a fixed window

Cooling plant, generators and UPS come out of the data halls along the M25, with the floor loadings settled first. See our data centre infrastructure page.

Estate plant rooms in the Lea Valley and Park Royal

Boilers, compressors and site utilities leave the plant rooms behind the estate units, where production stops with them, so it goes inside a shutdown. See our industrial sector page.

Health estates that run around the clock

Chillers, boilers and air handling plant leave occupied health buildings a piece at a time, with routes and hours set by the estates team. See our healthcare and pharma page.

Borough teaching buildings between terms

Boiler houses and air handling plant leave teaching buildings across the boroughs between terms, finished before the doors reopen. See our education page.

Access and planning for a London plant room strip out

What we work through before anything is booked:

Tenants in the building. The building manager agrees our hours, evenings and weekends included, the noise limits, how the route is protected and what notice tenants get.
Over the parapet, or down the stairs. A crane that reaches the roof plant saves the labour and hours that lifts, stairwells and floor protection eat up.
Whose road it is. Craning over a London building usually costs a carriageway or a parking bay. We apply to the borough, or to Transport for London on its own roads, and set up the traffic management and road closure.
Splitting the big units. Panel and flange joints decide where a large unit comes apart, and the heaviest piece that leaves tells us whether a borough closure and a crane are worth booking at all.
Vaults and basements under the route. A jack or a skate concentrates a lot of weight into a small footprint, and central pavements have vaults and basements beneath. We confirm what each slab carries.

Before anything is lifted

Three jobs belong to other trades and are done before our crew arrives. Mechanical and electrical supplies are cut, the system drained and the valves and breakers locked off by the M&E contractor, and in a let London block we want that on paper before a single cut. On cooling plant, an F-gas certified engineer takes the refrigerant out and the certificate comes to us first. Asbestos is picked up in the demolition and refurbishment survey, and a licensed contractor clears anything it finds.

We plan our dates around all three and set out who covers what in the quote. If the new plant arrives before the old is out, we work out at survey where both will fit.

Postcodes and areas we cover

We cover every London postcode and the home counties around the M25:

Central: the City, Clerkenwell, Holborn and Westminster
East and south east: Hackney, Stratford, Canary Wharf and Greenwich
North and north west: Islington, Camden, Wood Green and Harrow
South west and west: Battersea, Wandsworth, Fulham and Ealing
Outer London and beyond: Croydon, Kingston, Enfield and Uxbridge, and out into Essex, Kent, Surrey and Hertfordshire

We strip out plant rooms right across the UK.

Why London firms choose Synergy Lifting for plant room strip out

Nights and weekends. A lot of our London work happens outside office hours, with lighting, marshalling and noise conditions planned before the date is booked.
We work to the M&E contractor’s dates. Ours follow their isolations and the delivery date on the new plant.
One order covers it. That includes the crane on the street, our crew inside, the lorries and setting the new plant.
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

Usually booked alongside a London strip out:

How a plant room strip out works

Start with what is being replaced, where the plant room sits in the building and what the route out looks like.
Our surveyor works out the route, the split points and what the biggest piece weighs.
Then come the risk assessment, method statement and lift plan, with the isolations and the lead time on any closure built into the dates.
Removal runs inside the hours the building has agreed, and the old plant is loaded out and cleared.
Replacement kit is shimmed level on the plinth inside the same noise limits, and the M&E contractor takes it from there.

Common questions

Can the new plant go in on the same visit the old plant comes out?

On a like-for-like replacement it often can, and one crane visit and one London closure then cover both halves. Where the room cannot hold old and new together, they become two bookings.

Our plant room is served by one shared goods lift. Does that work?

Yes. The lift is booked out in agreed windows, the car and landings protected, and each piece sized to the door opening and the rated load.

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 London

Phone: 020 8068 9512
Email: london@synergy-lifting.co.uk

To price it we need the plant, the floor it is on and whether new plant is going back. Pictures of the plant room, goods lift, loading bay and the kerb, red route or not, help.

We also provide plant room strip out in Luton, Reading, Milton Keynes and Brighton. See all the plant room strip out locations.