The Court House Hotel: a front bar, a TAB bar and a new main switchboard

2017: the front bar refurbishment

The first job was the big one. The front bar came apart and went back together over twelve weeks, with BH Electrics working alongside Island Point Constructions and the other trades.

The pub closed for a short time during the main refurbishment.

What the 2017 scope covered

• LED lighting through the front bar, specified for both function and ambience
• Power supply for the new bar layout and every new appliance in it
• Full back of bar fit-out, including the glass wash room
• A new sub-distribution board for the refrigeration and air conditioning plant
• Emergency and exit lighting to current standard

The street lights, and who lodges the paperwork for them

The street lighting outside the hotel was not in anyone's original scope. BH Electrics recommended it, then took on the part most people assume belongs to somebody else: the application to Transport and Main Roads and the negotiation with Douglas Shire Council.

The specification had a job to do beyond looking right against the building. The lights were chosen to throw light along the footpath without spilling into the dining room, so that guests on the street are lit and guests at a table are not.

It is the part of a commercial job that most often adds months to a programme, and almost nobody prices it in. Public lighting on a state-controlled road goes through more than one body before anyone digs, and an electrician who has done it before knows which form goes where.

2018: a TAB bar, built while the pub kept trading

The following year the hotel brought us back for the TAB bar, on a short turnaround of days rather than weeks, and this time the pub did not close at all. It kept trading day and night for the whole job, so the work was planned around the trade rather than the other way round: done a section at a time, each area left safe and working before it was needed again, and nothing switched off that a punter or a till was relying on.

The work took in power, data and lighting, self-service betting terminals, extra touch screens, and nineteen new screens mounted so that nobody watching a race or a game has to change seats to see one.

2026: two weeks in the wet season, and a new main switchboard

By 2026 the two main switchboards in the dry store were at capacity, with no room left for anything new, and the cabling in the ceiling above them was untidy and poorly supported. This time the hotel engaged BH Electrics directly, with Island Point Constructions on site for the building work around it.

Replacing the board that feeds an entire hotel means the entire hotel goes off, so the job was timed for the wet season, when Port Douglas is at its quietest, and the pub shut for two weeks. The first week went on finding, testing and removing old cabling in the ceiling, so the new work started from a known state. The second was the changeover itself: all 98 circuits disconnected, labelled and moved onto the new boards.

The two old boards came out and three went in. A new commercial main switchboard in the dry store, a sub board in the hallway for the TAB bar and gaming room, and a sub board in the front bar glass wash room. The newer safety switches already in service were reused and the rest of the old protection replaced, so every circuit in the hotel is now on safety switch protection. Each board has surge protection, full labelling and a lockable door, and the ceiling cabling now runs on new cable ladder with the redundant runs stripped out.

The sub boards are the part the hotel will notice. A fault in the TAB bar or the front bar can now be isolated and repaired at its own board without turning off the main switchboard and taking the whole pub with it. Each board was also left with spare space, so the next addition has somewhere to go.

Still on the books

Between the big jobs the Court House has been a service and maintenance client the whole time: fans along the verandahs and the dining deck, lighting upgrades, the gaming room, the glass washers and the thousand small calls a busy pub makes. All of it looked after out of the workshop at Craiglie, five minutes down the highway.