VRX-RTU · 80–200 Ton Rooftop Electrification
The rooftop units are coming out anyway. Done at that moment, the building’s gas boilers can come out with them — without adding a single amp to the building’s connected power.
01 / The timing
In most buildings, retiring the gas boilers is treated as its own project — a separate design, a separate budget cycle, a separate mobilization, and a separate disruption to a building that is still occupied. So it keeps getting deferred, and the gas stays.
But the rooftop units reach end of useful life on their own schedule, and when they do, the roof is already open, the crane is already booked and the capital is already approved. That is the one moment when the boilers can leave without a second project to justify.
Miss that window and you have bought yourself another fifteen or twenty years of gas.
02 / Watch it happen
The unit in this video is a direct replacement for legacy McQuay RPS equipment, generating the hot water that serves the VAV boxes so the gas boilers can be retired in the same move. The same approach applies to any legacy brand — including built‑up equipment that never carried a nameplate anyone recognises.
That is what keeps the work inside a scheduled window instead of turning into a roof project with an open-ended end date. Tenants stay in the building. The crane comes once.
03 / What one unit replaces
Buildings running VAV reheat or active chilled beams usually need a small central plant to support them — and a plant means a room, a plant‑room budget and a maintenance program. VRX‑RTU puts those functions on the roof, in the footprint the old unit already occupied.
04 / Connected load
This is the claim the whole approach rests on, so it is the one we document first. VRX‑RTU is engineered to retire the building’s gas heating while staying inside the connected power of the legacy units it replaces.
No new feeder, no breaker upsize, no switchgear decision, and no utility service application sitting on a critical path you do not control — which is exactly what turns most boiler-retirement plans into projects that never start.
Project‑specific. Verify existing electrical service, MCA/MOCP, selected capacities and operating sequence on every job — we do that analysis before it reaches a specification.
05 / One project instead of two
Compare a direct‑fit rooftop electrification against the conventional route — a rooftop project now, plus a separate heat‑pump plant project with its own design, permits, crane and floor space — and the second project is usually what dominates the number.
Days per unit, multiplied across the fleet, in a building that is trying to operate the whole time.
One permit cycle, one crane, one set of trades, one disruption to negotiate with tenants.
Floor area that stays leasable instead of becoming a mechanical room for a separate heat-pump plant.
Based on a comparative study of a four‑unit rooftop plant modernization with integrated hydronic heat pumps, at California market rates. Every project is different — we run the comparison on your building, your unit count and your local costs.
06 / Where it fits
Legacy units at end of useful life, any brand or built‑up, on buildings where the boilers are still running.
Buildings whose terminal systems need hot and chilled water, currently served by a boiler and a chiller.
Campuses, offices and institutions where the work has to fit a scheduled window rather than a shutdown.
Multi‑zone or dual‑deck unit rather than a large packaged rooftop? See rooftop electrification for the three approaches built for those.
07 / Written for the reviewer
Retiring gas heating without adding connected load is an electrical argument before it is a mechanical one. Your engineer gets the load analysis, the capacity selections and the operating basis in the form a plan checker expects to read.
We will not tell you a product is code‑compliant. Adoption, amendments and local enforcement vary, and every project needs its own engineering validation and authority review.
That date is the window for the boilers too. Send us the unit schedule and what the building runs on today, and we will show you what leaves the building and what the connected load looks like afterward.