Contents
Plant room strip out in Oxford and across Oxfordshire
Plant room work in Oxford comes from office landlords, fit-out teams on the business parks, hotel and leisure operators, and the boiler houses on the county’s industrial estates. M&E contractors call once the new boilers or chillers have a delivery date and the old ones still have no way out. We get the old plant out and the new units square on their bases, working to the M&E contractor’s dates.
Our crews work through Oxford, Cowley, Headington, Botley and Kidlington, then out to Abingdon, Bicester, Witney, Didcot and Banbury. A plant schedule and photographs get the survey and the price back the same day. Evening, weekend and shutdown work is booked then too.
What a strip out covers
It takes in the boilers, calorifiers, chillers and condensers, the AHUs, the pumps, tanks and pressurisation sets, the generators, transformers and switchgear, and the pipework and steel between them. Each piece is cut down until its route will pass it, then carried out and loaded. New plant travels the same way in and lands level on its bases.
What comes out of an Oxford plant room
| Plant | Where it sits | How it comes out |
|---|---|---|
| Gas boilers and calorifiers | Cellars and ground level boiler houses | Burner off, shell parted at the sections, winched to the door |
| Chillers and dry coolers | Flat roofs, rear yards and compounds | Craned off from the yard, or reduced and taken down inside |
| Air handling and heat recovery units | Top floor plant rooms and roof decks | Coil, fan and filter modules unbolted and taken out singly |
| Water tanks, pumps and pressurisation sets | Basement rooms and riser cupboards | Off the plinth onto skates and rolled to the doorway |
| Generators, transformers and switchgear | Ground floor enclosures and switchrooms | Gantried out on a boarded route |
| Pipework, flues and support steel | Risers, ceiling voids and roof runs | Cut cold and bundled to what the goods lift takes |
Our plant room strip out service page covers the method. Cost follows the piece with the worst run to the kerb, more than the heaviest one.
Contact us
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 Oxford
Oxford plant rooms sit in buildings of very different ages.
Cellars under the listed frontages
Sectional boilers and calorifiers come up from below ground in the centre, out to a street that is busy or closed to traffic by day, so the narrowest point sizes every piece.
Let offices at Summertown and Botley
Rooftop chillers and basement switchgear change over while the floors above stay let, with one goods lift, a shared bay and a landlord’s view on noise. See our HVAC sector page.
Units on the business parks
Air handling units, process cooling and standby sets leave let units on the business parks and estates around Cowley when a tenant refits. See our healthcare and pharma sector page.
Hotels, sports halls and leisure centres
Pool plant and boilers come out between bookings, along a route crossing public areas that must be clean by morning, so heavy moves go overnight.
Energy centres on the county estates
Boiler houses, compressor rooms and refrigeration plant at Bicester, Witney and Banbury take the line down with them, so the work runs inside a shutdown. See our industrial sector page.
Comms rooms at Didcot and Abingdon
Cooling units, uninterruptible supplies and generating sets change over inside a window measured in hours, with the raised floor’s loading agreed first. See our data centre infrastructure sector page.
Access and planning for an Oxford plant room strip out
What we look at on an Oxford survey:
- Cellars, undercrofts and soft ground. A unit on jacks bears on a very small patch of floor. Much of the centre stands over cellars and undercrofts, and low ground by the Thames goes soft under an outrigger, so we check both.
- Crane or carry. A crane clears roof plant in a shift and costs a standing position and a closure. Taken down inside, the same units drop the crane and buy floor protection, labour and days. Both are priced.
- People in the building. The building manager agrees our hours, the noise and the goods lift with us before we fix a date.
- Getting vehicles in. In the centre the crane needs a carriageway or a bay, and the zero emission zone and bus-only streets decide which vehicles can reach it. The traffic management and road closure go through Oxfordshire County Council.
- Splitting the plant. Large plant splits at panel joints and flanges, and the weight of the heaviest remaining piece decides whether a crane is booked at all.
Before anything is lifted
Three other trades close out first. The isolation, the drain down and the lock-off are your M&E contractor’s, set down in writing and handed to us. An F-gas certified engineer takes the refrigerant charge off a cooling system and issues the certificate. An asbestos survey for refurbishment has to be done, and a licensed contractor clears whatever it finds.
We plan our dates around all three, and the quote names who covers each. In older Oxford buildings that survey is the item that moves a start date, so we ask for it early.
Postcodes and areas we cover
We cover every OX postcode and the Oxfordshire districts around the city:
- Oxford: city centre, Jericho, Summertown, Headington, Cowley and Blackbird Leys
- Around the city: Botley, Kidlington, Wheatley, Woodstock and Abingdon
- The county: Bicester, Banbury, Witney, Carterton, Thame, Didcot, Wallingford and Wantage
- Wider area: Swindon, Reading, Newbury, Aylesbury and Milton Keynes
We strip out plant rooms right across the UK.
Why Oxford firms choose Synergy Lifting for plant room strip out
- Kit for tight rooms. Low-headroom gantries, toe jacks, skates and rollers come on every Oxford job, so units leave through one doorway.
- Hours the building can live with. Evenings, weekends and quiet weeks are ordinary working time, and noisy work goes where occupiers take it.
- One firm outside and in. Crane and operator, riggers, the lorries clearing the plant and the crew landing the new units are all ours.
- 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
Booked alongside an Oxford strip out:
How a plant room strip out works
- Share your plant schedule, with photos out to wherever a wagon can load, often a rear yard or lane in central Oxford.
- A survey settles the route out for each item, where it splits and the heaviest piece.
- Our lift plan and RAMS are drawn up around the M&E isolation date and any Oxfordshire County Council closure.
- The old plant comes apart, travels the route under rigging, and is loaded out and cleared.
- The replacement lands on its bases, levelled and left ready for connection.
Common questions
How much notice does a road closure in Oxford need?
Longer than the gap between ordering new plant and taking delivery. Oxfordshire County Council sets the notice period for the closure and the traffic management, so we apply as soon as the survey settles where the crane stands.
Does ring road traffic decide when you can start?
The ring road and the A34 approaches run slowly through the working day, so the crane and lorries set down outside those hours and the building’s access window sets the rest.
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 Oxford
- Phone: 01865 539 623
- Email: oxford@synergy-lifting.co.uk
Let us know the plant, the room it sits in and whether it is being replaced. Pictures of the way out help most, especially old stone stairs in the city centre.
We also provide plant room strip out in Reading, Milton Keynes, Luton and Northampton. See all the plant room strip out locations.