Replacing a Rooftop Chiller in Bath with a Mobile Tower Crane

Project

A chiller swap from a closed city street

We replaced a rooftop chiller for a building services contractor at a leisure complex in Bath city centre. The old unit came off the roof and the new one went up in its place, each weighing 2.5te.

The challenge

The only place to stand a crane was a narrow residential street at the back of the building, lined with parking bays and with a dead-end road leading off it. From there, the chiller position on the roof was 32m away.

Setting up on that street meant closing it. That needed a temporary traffic regulation order and a crane licence from the local council, plus parking bay suspensions, and the residents behind the closure had to know well in advance.

How we did it

Our appointed person surveyed the site and planned the job around a Spierings SK1265-AT6 mobile tower crane. With its tower vertical and its jib horizontal, it put the hook over the roof at 32m radius from an outrigger footprint of 7.95m by 7.66m, which fitted the street.

We arranged the closure and the permits, drew up the traffic management plan, put advance notice signs on the street a week ahead and wrote to the residents and their housing provider. The parking bays were suspended the day before so the crane could get in.

We took delivery of the new chiller ahead of the job and stored it until the swap, then brought it to site on the morning. The crane set up from 08:00 under the permit. Our lift supervisor ran the lifts from the street with a slinger signaller on the roof. Each chiller hung from a spreader beam and was test lifted to check it sat level before it went over the building.

The old chiller came down onto our transport and went away for disposal, and the new one went up onto its base. Both lifts and the closure were done in a single day.