Major Plant Removal for Hospital Roof Replacement

The Kimpton Maintenance team are currently on-site, working alongside a major roofing contractor to remove the air conditioning plant, to allow them to complete the replacement of the ageing roof.

As you can see from the Google Maps images below, the roof is huge and stretches across twelve separate buildings, with a mix of flat and pitched roof spaces. There are 31 individual units to be removed and a large air handling unit (AHU) too. The project has thrown up a number of challenges, most of which could be anticipated and a few that required a little creative thinking.

One of the biggest is in removing the 1.5-ton AHU that’s positioned between two of the buildings with no road access. You can see it marked here below. This entails a lift from a 4-ton crane to remove it and place it on the grassed area, whilst the roof works take place. Why do we need a 4-ton crane for a 1.5-ton lift? It’s all to do with the outreach. You can see in the image, the semi-permanent placement of the MRI truck. This is where we will position the crane. Even getting as close as we can to the AHU, there’s still a 34m reach required to lift and relocate it to safety.

The second major challenge, as we have discussed a lot over recent years, is in having to condemn working air conditioning units. These units, filled with the now obsolete (and outlawed) R22 gas, can no longer be recommissioned. Some of these will be replaced with more energy-efficient units. Others will not be replaced where there’s been a change of use in the space they serve, and air conditioning is no longer required.

The third challenge, which is absolutely specific to the healthcare sector, is that some of the units could only be offline for a very short period of time as they serve the operating and critical care areas of the hospital. In these instances, we work very closely with our roofing partners, to remove, replace the roof and refit the units in under 24 hours.

We’re always happy to take on challenging jobs like this – even ones where there are critical timescales. Being able to provide solutions like this, with potential for problems at every turn is not everyone’s cup of tea. Being comfortable doing so, is a definite benefit of experience. To do so, you do need a partner you can trust and we believe that at Kimpton, we are that partner. Together we could be brilliant.

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    Creating the
    sustainable building
    environments of tomorrow