Project · Resort and hospitality
Koko Poolside Dining, rebuilt around a working kitchen
The kitchen came out completely so the floor underneath could be redone. Everything else at Koko was built back around that one fact.
The job
- Client
- Koko Poolside Dining
- Where
- Port Douglas
- Sector
- Resort and hospitality
- Builder
- Aizer Group
- Year
- 2019
A strip-out driven by the floor
Koko is the poolside restaurant at Peppers Beach Club, and the refurbishment took in the kitchen, the bar and the dining room. BH Electrics worked with South East Queensland based Aizer Group and with Mantra Group to deliver it.
The kitchen was stripped out completely, not because anything had failed but because the floor underneath needed a treatment that can only be done with the room empty. That is a common driver in a commercial kitchen and an unusual one to plan around: the programme is set by a wet trade, every electrical service in the room has to be out of the way for it, and nothing can go back until the seal has cured. An electrician who treats it as a fit-out with a delay in the middle will hold up the job.
What went back in
- New front servery, hot and cold, for breakfast service
- New drinks bar and cabinetry
- Refreshed dining space
- Functional and ambient lighting throughout
- Power and data to point of sale and to all appliances
- Ceiling fans, for comfort and as part of the look
Lighting a room that works all day
A poolside restaurant does breakfast in full tropical daylight and dinner after dark, in the same room, for the same guests. The lighting has to do two different jobs without anybody adjusting anything more complicated than a switch.
So it was specified in layers: enough light for a servery and a working bar, and a separate ambient layer for the evening. Ceiling fans went in for the air they move and for the way they read in a tropical dining room, which in a space like this is not a secondary consideration.
The trades involved
What this job drew on
Straight answers
Questions this job answers
How long does a commercial kitchen refurbishment take electrically?
Less time than the programme suggests, because the electrical work is rarely the constraint. At Koko the kitchen came out so the floor could be redone, which meant the electrical rough-in waited on a wet trade and a cure time. The number that matters is not how many days the wiring takes. It is whether the electrician has worked to a programme set by somebody else's trade before.
Can a resort restaurant be refurbished while the resort stays open?
Yes, and it usually has to be. It changes where plant and cabling can be run, when noisy work happens, and how a site is left at the end of each day, all of which belong in the programme rather than in a conversation on the first morning. Koko was refurbished at Peppers Beach Club with the property operating.
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