Plant room strip-out and rebuild, Portchester Community School

The school's plant room had reached the end of its life: three ageing floor-standing boilers, cramped flues and exposed services in a room that had been added to over the years rather than designed as a whole. The school needed reliable heat and hot water and a plant room that would not spring a surprise in term time.

Replacing like-for-like would have repeated the same problems. We surveyed the building and designed a full replacement: a four-boiler Ideal wall-hung cascade with new low-loss headers, pumps and controls. A cascade suits a school: it modulates down during quiet periods and holidays, and if one boiler needs attention the others carry the building. Wall-hung units freed floor space and made the room far easier to service.

The works were organised around term time with the school, and we handled the job from strip-out to commissioning and handover.

A cleaner, safer and more efficient plant room: new pumps and controls, lagged pipework, a sealed floor and clear safety markings.

In the school's words: they organised the job completely from start to finish, and if any issues came up they quickly fixed them.