What did the San Ysidro off-price store need from its rooftop unit replacement?
A national off-price store in San Ysidro needed several packaged rooftop units replaced without closing its sales floor or parking lot, on a coastal site where mornings regularly start under marine-layer fog.
This store belongs to a national off-price chain that counts on a steady flow of shoppers through a large, open sales floor. The cooling for that floor comes from packaged rooftop units, and on this job several of them were due to come off the roof and be replaced. A rooftop changeout at a retail store has one hard requirement before any technical one: the business has to keep running. Shoppers, staff and deliveries cannot share a parking lot with a crane lift in progress.
The store also sits in San Ysidro, at the southern edge of San Diego County, where mornings regularly start under a thick marine layer. The work had to be planned around both the store and the weather.
What did the San Ysidro rooftop unit changeout include?
The San Ysidro scope was a crane-lift changeout: stage before opening, rig the existing packaged rooftop units off their curbs, fly and set the replacements, then clear the lot and the roof.
- Stage the crane, trucks and new equipment in the store lot before opening
- Rig existing packaged rooftop units off their curbs and lower them to the ground
- Fly the replacement rooftop units onto the roof and set them on their curbs
- Clear the lot and the roof once the lift was complete
How did REE stage the San Ysidro crane lift before the store opened?
REE Mechanical Inc. staged the crane, trucks and trailer in the store lot before dawn, then swapped units one at a time, with technicians at each curb and a crew member on the roof deck watching every pick.
Our photos tell the story in order. The first frame shows the parking lot under its overhead lights with REE Mechanical Inc. service trucks, the equipment trailer and the crane already in position. Starting before dawn put the noisiest, most space-hungry part of the job ahead of the store's day instead of in the middle of it.
From there the crew worked the roof unit by unit. Existing units were rigged with slings, lifted clear of their curbs and brought down. Replacement packaged units came up on the crane line and were guided down by technicians in hard hats and high-visibility vests standing at the curb, with one crew member on the roof deck watching each pick. Fog hangs in nearly every frame. A crew that works coastal Southern California rooftops plans for that rather than waiting it out.
A crane day is the visible part of a rooftop unit installation and replacement. Before it happens, someone has to confirm the curbs, connections and rigging plan, and coordinate the lot with the store. On a national account, that coordination also runs through the client's own facilities team and work-order process.
What did the San Ysidro store's roof look like at the end of the job?
The San Ysidro photos end with replacement units set on the roof at first light and the trailer emptied. Performance figures and dates are not published because the client relationship is under NDA.
The photos end where a changeout should: the crane boom extended over a roof of set units at first light, and the trailer emptied at the side of the building. We are not publishing performance figures or project dates for this site, because the client relationship is under NDA and we will not invent numbers we cannot show. What the record does show is a crane lift staged in the dark and worked through the marine layer without turning the store lot into a jobsite for the day.
Once units are set, the equipment goes into a preventive maintenance and tune-up program so the new rooftop units stay in service for their full life. For more of this work in the area, see our San Diego and San Diego County coverage.
