As a commercial plumber in Asheville with over 10 years of experience as a licensed plumber, we’ve seen a lot in our daily work for business owners and commercial landlords.
Here’s an example of specialty gas line and commercial work done recently for a funeral home and crematorium. We consulted with an out-of-town plumber in our peer group who had done work in California helping the owners of hollywoodforever.com with opening their facility. Our client here in Western North Carolina was on a finite budget and we were trying to prepare to get the job done as efficiently as possible.
So, when you set up a crematorium as a plumber, you’re basically doing a bunch of gas line work to operate a gigantic, high-temperature gas-powered incinerator. Installation is remarkably similar to how you install a large commercial gas furnace or hot water heater, sans the water line.
Depending on the size of the crematorium’s most important piece of equipment, it is arriving on some type of flatbed truck. These units are heavy and most will require a crane to move it from the truck. Moving something this big and heavy is a multi-step process, and kudos to the crane operators and delivery team for moving in very careful stages. The crane is used to pull up the unit from the truck bed, the truck is then driven out from underneath, and the unit is lowered as close to the ground as possible in case the rigging or shackles fail from the weight.
While the unit is lowered close to the ground, the crane then is used to carefully move it as close to the building’s opening as possible. With a unit as large as the one we installed, it is usually going into a building being constructed. These can also go into a building that is existing, but it may require substantial demolition to make room for the installation.
After the unit is near the building opening, it is lowered onto heavy duty rollers or tank dollies so it can be moved to its final position.
From that point, we worked in conjunction with a local electrician to bring power to the control panels. Then, we finalized the routing of the gas line to the unit, tested for leaks, and then brought in the utility to make it all flow! We’d already notified the manufacturer of the unit to configure and prepare the control panel for full installation and deployment. The control panels are sophisticated enough that this prep is done weeks in advance, including the training for usage of the controls for the crematorium staff.
All in all, a neat job and something we hadn’t seen before!