Screens and Enclosures for Mechanical and Utility Equipment
Rooftop and grade-level screens that hide the equipment and still let the mechanical contractor service it.
Mechanical equipment gets selected late, sized by someone who is not thinking about elevations, and delivered to a building that has already been designed. The screen is what reconciles the two. It is also, on a surprising number of projects, the last item outstanding before occupancy.
A screen is a simple object with two conflicting jobs: hide the equipment, and let the equipment work. Get the balance wrong in one direction and the development permit does not clear. Get it wrong in the other and the mechanical contractor cannot service the unit, or the unit short-cycles because it is recirculating its own discharge air.
What an Equipment Screen Actually Is
An equipment screen is a frame with an infill that stands around, or in front of, mechanical and utility equipment. It is a separate object from the equipment. It does not run the plant or protect it in any working sense. It changes what the equipment looks like from the places people see it.
The same object gets called a mechanical screen, a rooftop screen, a screen wall, or simply mechanical screening, depending on who drew it. Architects, mechanical consultants and property managers each have a preferred term for the same thing.
Buildings need one for a short list of reasons. The equipment is visible from the street, from a neighbouring balcony or from the units above. A design review has asked for the roofline to be resolved. Or the owner wants the building to read as a building rather than as a collection of plant.
What a screen does not do is worth saying plainly. It will not make the equipment quieter, it is not a weather enclosure, and it must not restrict the air the unit needs to draw and discharge. Those constraints, along with permit timing, service access and who determines the loads, are covered in the sections below.
What Gets Screened
Rooftop units, condensers and make-up air
The classic case. Packaged rooftop units, condensing units, exhaust fans and make-up air units sitting above a parapet where they are visible from the street, from a neighbouring tower, or from the building’s own amenity deck. Screens here are usually a framed run on the roof deck or tied back to the parapet and curbs.
Heat pumps and split systems at grade
Increasingly common as buildings electrify. Banks of outdoor units along a side yard, in a courtyard, or against a lane elevation, where they are both visible and audible. Screening at grade also has to survive contact — carts, vehicles, snow clearing and people.
Electrical equipment, transformers and kiosks
Pad-mounted transformers, kiosks, switchgear and meter banks. These carry clearance and access requirements set by the utility, and those requirements come first — the screen is designed around them, not the other way around. What the utility requires for your installation is confirmed with the utility before anything is drawn.
Generators, fuel equipment and mechanical yards
Standby generators and their associated equipment, usually needing ventilation, service access, and enough clearance for the exhaust and radiator discharge. Sound is often part of the brief here, and it is worth being clear that a metal screen manages sight lines, not acoustics.
Gas meters, backflow preventers and utility cabinets
The small stuff that ends up on the most visible elevation of a building because that is where the service enters. Usually a compact framed screen or a hinged enclosure with lockable access for the utility and the maintenance contractor.
Roof pipe, duct and support screening
Screening runs of pipe, duct and their supports where they cross a visible section of roof, and enclosures around the equipment that sits between them.
Waste and recycling storage is a different product with different requirements — that belongs on garbage and recycling enclosures. Decorative and privacy screening for patios, balconies and amenity spaces belongs on privacy and architectural screens.
Screening Is a Permit Question Before It Is a Metal Question
In most Metro Vancouver municipalities, screening of rooftop and grade-level mechanical equipment is addressed through zoning and development permit guidelines rather than by a single universal rule. What that means in practice is that the requirement is specific to your site, your zoning and sometimes to the individual permit, and it is confirmed with the municipality or through your architect rather than assumed from a general standard.
The questions that usually decide the design are the same everywhere, even though the answers are not: how much of the equipment has to be concealed, from which viewpoints, whether the screen has to read as part of the building or may read as equipment, and whether height is constrained by the zoning envelope.
We are the fabricator, not the applicant. What we can do is build to the design that has been approved, flag where a detail will not work before it is built, and give you real material and configuration options while the design is still moving.
What Decides the Design
| Decision | What drives it | What we need from you |
|---|---|---|
| Height and extent | The viewpoints that have to be satisfied and the zoning envelope | The permit drawings or the guideline you are working to |
| Opacity | How much concealment is required against how much air the equipment needs | Equipment schedules and any airflow requirement from the mechanical consultant |
| Access openings | Where service panels, disconnects and filter access actually are | Equipment cut sheets and the layout drawing |
| Structure and fixing | Roof assembly, membrane, curbs, parapet condition, or slab at grade | Roof assembly details and photos of the existing condition |
| Loads | Wind exposure, height above grade, snow, and any seismic requirement | Whoever is providing the structural design for the screen |
| Finish | Exposure, visibility, and whether it matches the building envelope | The building’s colour and finish schedule |
Infill Options
Louvre blades are the default where airflow matters. Angled blades block the direct sight line while leaving a clear path for air, and the blade angle and spacing set the balance between concealment and free area. This is the option most often specified for rooftop mechanical screening.
Perforated sheet gives a clean, uniform, architectural appearance and reads as a solid surface from a distance while still passing air. Free area depends on the hole pattern, and the pattern is chosen for the sight line and the airflow together rather than for looks alone.
Vertical or horizontal slats are simple, robust and easy to repair, and they suit grade-level screening where the screen will take knocks. Spacing controls how much is visible from an angle.
Expanded metal is strong, open and inexpensive, and it is the practical choice for service yards and industrial settings where appearance matters less than durability.
Woven or welded mesh reads lighter than sheet and is used where the screen needs to disappear rather than dominate.
Solid panel conceals completely and passes no air at all, so it is used only where the equipment does not need it, or in combination — solid where the sight line is critical, open where the equipment breathes.
Service Access — the Thing Most Screens Get Wrong
A screen that has to be unbolted to change a filter will be unbolted once, and then left off. The most common cause of a mechanical screen looking bad two years after installation is that the mechanical contractor removed a panel to reach something and never put it back.
The fix is not complicated, but it has to happen at drawing stage rather than on site. Access panels or gates positioned where the service points actually are. Removable sections that one person can lift. Latching that opens without tools, or with the tool the maintenance contractor already carries. Enough clear space between the screen and the unit for someone to work, not just to stand.
We ask for equipment cut sheets for exactly this reason. The drawing shows where the screen goes; the cut sheet shows where the doors and disconnects are.
Airflow and Discharge
Equipment that rejects heat needs somewhere for that heat to go. A screen that is too tight, too close, or too tall can recirculate discharge air back into the intake, which shows up as reduced capacity in summer and as a warranty conversation with the equipment supplier.
The free area a given unit needs, and the clearances around it, are set by the equipment manufacturer and confirmed by the mechanical consultant on the project. We build to those figures. We do not generate them, and any fabricator who offers you a universal number for this is guessing.
Fixing: Rooftop and at Grade
On a roof, the governing constraint is the membrane. Anything that penetrates it becomes a roofing detail and has to be coordinated with the roofer, ideally with the roof warranty holder involved before anything is fixed. Where penetrations are undesirable, screens can be built to bear on curbs, sleepers or ballasted supports instead — that decision belongs to the roofing and structural scope, and it changes the frame design significantly.
At grade, the screen is fixed to a slab, a pad, or footings. On existing concrete the same rule applies as anywhere else in our work: post-tensioned slabs get scanned by a specialist before anything is drilled, and where drilling is ruled out we look at freestanding or ballasted options.
To a parapet or wall, fixing has to consider the wall assembly, the insulation and the air and water barrier behind the cladding. Blind-fixing through an assembly nobody has confirmed is how a screen becomes a leak.
Wind, Snow and Who Determines the Loads
A screen is a sail. On a roof, several storeys up, on an exposed site, that matters. The loads a screen has to resist depend on the building height, the exposure, the site and the screen’s own opacity — a solid panel takes far more load than an open louvre.
Where the screen requires structural design or a professional seal, that comes from a qualified engineer engaged for the project. We are a fabricator. We build to the design that is provided, we identify where a detail looks light before it is built, and we say plainly when something is outside what we can determine ourselves.
Materials and Finishes
Aluminum is the common choice for rooftop screening. It is light, which matters when everything has to go up to a roof and when the supporting structure is being considered, and it does not rust. Powder coating over aluminum gives a durable architectural finish.
Galvanized steel is stronger and cheaper per unit of strength, and suits grade-level and service-yard screening where impact resistance matters more than weight.
Powder coating over galvanizing — a duplex system — is the usual specification where a steel screen has to hold a building colour in an exposed location. Galvanizing and coating are carried out by specialist applicators rather than in our shop.
Stainless appears in coastal and wash-down conditions. Grade selection matters near salt air, and fasteners deserve as much attention as the frame, because a stainless screen assembled with the wrong fasteners fails at the fasteners.
Fastener and frame compatibility is worth a specific mention. Aluminum screens on steel supports, or stainless fixings into aluminum, set up dissimilar metal contact that shows up as corrosion at the connections long before anything else on the screen fails. It is resolved with isolation at the detail stage.
Retrofit and Replacement
A large share of this work is not new construction. It is equipment being replaced at end of life, a building adding heat pumps, a strata being told by the municipality that something has to be screened, or a screen that has corroded, blown loose or been left half-dismantled by a service call.
Retrofit has two extra constraints: the equipment usually stays running, and the roof or the yard is in use. That means phasing, temporary conditions, and coordination with the mechanical contractor’s own schedule. It also means measuring what is actually there rather than working from drawings that predate two equipment changes.
What Goes Wrong
- The screen is too tight and the equipment loses capacity in summer.
- Access panels are in the wrong place, so they come off and stay off.
- Something was fixed through the membrane without the roofer involved.
- Wind loads were never properly considered, and a panel lets go in the first serious storm.
- Steel screen at grade was painted rather than galvanized, and the base rusts out.
- Aluminum and steel were bolted together without isolation, and the joints corrode.
- The screen matched the equipment that was there in the design, not the equipment that was actually installed.
Who We Build For
Architects resolving a screening condition on a permit drawing. Mechanical consultants and contractors who need the screen to not compromise the equipment. Developers and general contractors with screening in a package and an occupancy date. Strata corporations and property managers replacing screens at end of life or adding them when equipment changes. Commercial property owners and facility managers dealing with a municipal request or a failed screen.
Where We Work
Our shop is in North Vancouver and we work across Metro Vancouver, including North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam and Surrey.
Questions We Get Asked
How open does the screen need to be?
That depends on the equipment, not on the screen. The manufacturer’s clearance and free-area requirements and the mechanical consultant’s confirmation set the minimum; the permit sets the maximum concealment. The design lives between the two, and we work from the actual cut sheets rather than a rule of thumb.
Will a screen make the equipment quieter?
Not meaningfully. A metal screen blocks sight lines. Reducing noise is an acoustic design problem with different materials and a different specialist, and we would rather tell you that than sell you a screen that does not solve the complaint you actually have.
Can you fix to our roof without penetrating the membrane?
Often, using curbs, sleepers or ballasted supports — but that decision involves the roofer, the roof warranty and the structural design, and it changes the frame. It is a conversation to have before the screen is drawn, not after.
Do you provide the structural engineering?
No. Where a screen needs structural design or a professional seal, that is provided by a qualified engineer engaged for the project. We fabricate to the design and coordinate with whoever is providing it.
Can you match our building’s colour?
Yes, where a colour or a coating system is specified. Coating is applied by a specialist applicator, and matching an existing weathered finish exactly is not realistic — a new panel next to a fifteen-year-old one will read differently at first.
Can you screen equipment that is already installed?
That is most of this work. We measure what is actually there, look at where the service access and clearances are, and build around the equipment in place. Where the equipment is running, the work gets phased around it.
Send us the drawings or a photo from the street
A permit drawing, an equipment schedule and a photo of the condition is plenty to start. The consultation is free and in person — we look at the roof or the yard, check what can be fixed into, and give you options and a real number.
Rooftop equipment screens and roof screens
Most of the screening we build ends up on a roof. A rooftop equipment screen hides HVAC units, condensers, ducting and roof-top mechanical plant from the street and from neighbouring buildings, and it is usually there because a development permit or a design guideline asked for it.
A roof screen has to do that without becoming a problem of its own. It needs to let the equipment breathe, stay accessible for servicing, and be fixed down in a way that suits the roof assembly and does not compromise the membrane. We work out the fixing method with your roofer and mechanical contractor rather than deciding it for them.
Louvered screens and screen walls
Louvered screens are the usual answer where airflow matters — angled blades block the sightline while letting air move through to the equipment. Where the requirement is visual only, a solid or perforated screen wall can be simpler and cheaper.
We build both, in steel or aluminum, with the frame and infill selected for the exposure and the span. Options include fixed louvre blades, perforated sheet, expanded mesh, slats and solid panel, finished to suit the building.
Ground-level and mechanical screening
The same mechanical screening problem shows up at grade: generators, compressors, heat pumps, transformers and utility kiosks that have to be enclosed or hidden. Ground-level screens are usually easier to fix and harder to keep tidy, because they are within reach — so panel replacement and access panels matter more.
Where a screen also has to keep people out rather than just hide equipment, that becomes an enclosure — see storage cages and mesh partitions.