Rooftop Air Handler Replacement, Hospital Patient Tower
A 60,000 CFM patient-tower air handler removed and replaced over a single weekend crane pick, with temporary air maintaining pressure relationships throughout.
- Unit size
- 60,000 CFM
- Outage window
- One weekend
- Departments closed
- None
- Sections
- Knock-down, field reassembled
What made it hard
The unit served patient rooms and support spaces in an occupied tower. Its casing was corroded, the coils could no longer make design capacity on hot days, and the fan section had been rebuilt twice.
Replacement required a street closure and a crane pick over an active hospital entrance, and the tower could not lose ventilation or its pressure relationships for the duration of the change-out.
How we executed it
We specified the replacement in knock-down sections sized to the pick radius and the roof access path, and pre-fabricated all duct transitions and coil piping in our shop.
Temporary air handling was installed and proven the week before the pick, with tie-ins valved and damped so the switch to temporary and back again took minutes, not hours. Pressure relationships were monitored continuously during both transitions.
The pick happened Saturday morning with the street closure permitted and the hospital entrance rerouted; reassembly, piping, controls and startup ran through Sunday, with the tower back on permanent air before Monday clinical operations.
What the owner got
The tower never lost ventilation and no department closed. Design airflow and cooling capacity were restored, and post-installation balance confirmed all pressure relationships within specification.
The hospital used the same approach on two subsequent units on our recommendation.
Bring us the hard one
Occupied buildings, no shutdown window, a survey finding with a deadline, a plant nobody wants to touch. That is the work we are built for.