When the Door isn't Big Enough
Two 4,000-pound boilers, two openings with fractions of an inch to spare, and a five-step descent called for a rigging plan built around the building—not the other way around.
Quick Project Facts
Location: Starbuck Elementary School | Watertown, NY
Client: Crosby- Brownlie
🏗 Services: Receive, store, deliver, rig and set two boilers.
Equipment: Grove TMS- 990E, Steel runway, machinery skates, pallet jack, snatch block and associated rigging.
Project Partners: Crosby- Brownlie
Completion: Aug 17
From Storage to Final Placement
Trimble Services worked with Crosby-Brownlie to receive, store, deliver and install two new boilers at Starbuck Elementary School in Watertown, NY, completing a boiler rigging project that required far more than a conventional crane pick.
Each boiler weighed approximately 4,000 pounds and measured roughly five feet tall, six feet long and 40 inches wide. Their destination was a concrete equipment pad in the school’s basement.
Getting them there was the challenge.
There wasn’t an existing access point that could accommodate equipment of their size. Instead of a straightforward crane pick and set, the project required a combination of crane operations, specialized rigging, a custom equipment path and precise control through extremely tight clearances.
The original plan allowed two days to complete the installation.
Trimble’s crew completed both boilers in one.
When Buildings Outlast Their Equipment
Heavy mechanical and electrical equipment eventually needs to be replaced—but the buildings surrounding it aren’t always designed with that future replacement in mind.
Schools, hospitals, industrial facilities and other existing structures can present a unique rigging problem. A replacement unit may fit perfectly in its final operating location while being too large to travel through the conventional route used by people and smaller equipment.
That changes the question from simply:
“How much does it weigh?”
to:
“How do we physically get it there?”
At Starbuck Elementary, answering that question meant creating an entirely new path into the basement.
Two Openings, Five Steps and Inches to Spare
The existing basement entrance was reached by a five-step exterior staircase bordered by a retaining wall. There simply wasn’t enough room to bring a six-foot-long boiler down the stairs and make the turn through the existing doorway.
To create a viable path, the area outside the basement was excavated and an opening was cut through the retaining wall, allowing the boilers to approach the mechanical space from a different direction.
But that only solved the first problem.
Each boiler then had to pass through two extremely tight openings only about 36 inches apart.
At the first opening, there was approximately one-quarter inch of clearance on either side of the boiler. The second provided roughly one-half inch of clearance.
And the two openings weren’t perfectly aligned.
Because each boiler was approximately 60 inches long, the crew had to begin navigating the second opening while a significant portion of the unit was still passing through the first.
Immediately beyond the second opening?
The stairs.
There wasn’t enough clearance to simply tilt the boiler downward as soon as it entered. The crew first had to cantilever the unit forward until it completely cleared the second opening. Only then could they begin the controlled transition down the staircase and toward the basement floor.
The Rigging Problem Started Outside
The building itself wasn’t the project’s only constraint.
Ongoing driveway renovations limited access and available working space around the school. Trimble had also received and stored the boilers before delivering them to the site, allowing the crew to control their arrival and orientation as part of the installation plan.
The 90-ton Grove crane remained incorporated into the operation throughout the move, rather than completing an exterior pick and handing the job entirely over to conventional indoor rigging.
That became especially important as the boilers transitioned from the exterior runway into the basement.
Building a Controlled Path Into the Basement
Rather than trying to force the boilers through an access route that wasn’t designed for equipment of their size, the Trimble team developed a rigging system that allowed each 4,000-pound boiler to move progressively through the obstacles and into the basement.
A steel runway created a controlled travel path through the two tight openings and toward the five-step staircase. Machinery skates were incorporated into the setup in different orientations as the boilers progressed through the move, allowing the crew to extend the runway and control each transition.
The runway did more than provide a surface to travel across. It gave the crew a way to maintain the boiler’s direction through openings with clearances measured in fractions of an inch, while positioning it for the descent immediately beyond the second opening.
That transition presented another challenge. There was no structural steel above the staircase available as a conventional rigging point. Typically, a move utilizing a steel runway like this may be paired with a gantry setup. At Starbuck Elementary, the crew developed a different approach around the conditions they had in the field.
The 90-ton Grove remained incorporated into the rigging operation, with the crane’s line routed through a snatch block to act as a controlled holdback. This allowed the crew to maintain control of the boiler as it moved along the runway and began its descent down the stairs.
Before that descent could happen, however, each six-foot-long boiler first had to completely clear the second opening. With the staircase beginning immediately beyond it and insufficient clearance to tilt the unit right away, the crew had to cantilever the boiler forward until it cleared the opening. Only then could they begin safely tilting and guiding it down the runway.
Once each boiler reached the basement floor, the rigging method changed again. After coming off the runway and pallet jack, the boiler was transferred onto four machinery skates, now positioned wheels-down, allowing the crew to maneuver it across the basement floor and into position on its concrete pad.
From the crane and snatch block outside to the runway, skates and pallet jack inside, no single piece of equipment solved the entire move. Each played a specific role in creating a controlled path from delivery to final placement.
The Grove TMS- 990E: More Than the Initial Pick
On this project, the 90-ton Grove’s job didn’t end when the boilers came off the steel runway.
The crane remained incorporated into the rigging plan throughout the transition into the basement, providing the controlled holdback needed as each boiler traveled down the inclined runway.
For a project defined by limited access, elevation changes and extremely tight tolerances, that versatility allowed the crew to use the crane as one component of a much larger rigging system.
Two Days Became One
The project was originally scheduled to take two days.
After making several field adjustments that improved the efficiency of the operation, the Trimble team successfully moved and placed both 4,000-pound boilers in a single day, with each boiler taking approximately an hour and a half to move into position.
More important than the shortened schedule was how the work was accomplished.
The boilers traveled through two openings with fractions of an inch to spare, transitioned immediately into a five-step descent and ultimately reached their concrete pads in the basement—all despite the building lacking a conventional access route capable of accommodating them.
The project demonstrated something that applies far beyond boiler installation:
When heavy equipment can’t simply be picked up and set where it needs to go, the solution becomes a rigging problem—and that’s where planning, experience and ingenuity matter most.
A special thank you to Crosby-Brownlie for once again trusting Trimble Services to support their project. We appreciate the opportunity to work alongside their team and help bring another challenging installation together.
