Pre-Fabrication - Services

Castle Building Services has received an increasing number of requests from clients and end users to manufacture more of our equipment off site. The main driver for this move is health & safety related – more off site manufacture means less risk of an accident on site and the activities off site can be carried out in a cleaner and safer environment.

At Castle Building Services we have developed a structured response to this request. On larger scale projects, the air conditioning condensers are frequently located on the roof of a building. This would normally involve the construction of plinths on the roof for the condensers to be located onto. Once the units have been placed work commences on wiring and plumbing the condensers into the air conditioning system.

We utilise our off site pre-fabrication facilities to load up to 12 condensers on a manufactured steelwork frame. The normal process would then be to wire in a separate power source for each of the 12 condensers from a Distribution Board which could be located some way from the Condenser Units. Each of the condensers on the frame are cabled and terminated off site back to a Distribution Board located on the skid itself. This means that we only need to provide a single sub main to the range of condensers. The units are also fully connected up with refrigerant pipework which is located within the body of the frame, capped off and tested off site. Once the frame and condensers are lowered into position on site the pipework is simply extended to where necessary.

This off site manufacturing process has several attractions:-
- Less complex and much faster electrical connection
- Reduced overall programme within the Plantroom area
- Less time spent working at height, as 75 – 80% of the work that is normally roof based is done before the condensers are delivered to site. This reduces the probability of an accident and is proving to be a major attraction to site safety officers
- The cost of constructing the base for the condensers is reduced. We are given the maximum permissible loading for the roof and we locate the skids direct onto the paving slabs or “pop ups”, ensuring the footprint is within the stipulated maximum loading
- Equipment damage off site is greatly reduced. Our condensers are craned onto the roof space pre-protected. The protection is only removed at the end of the roof work, avoiding what can sometimes be substantial damage and replacement costs