department of conservation and recreation
Cabin Renovations
The State Park system of Virginia has existing historic and non-historic cabins at several Parks located throughout Virginia. The historic cabins are one, two and three bedroom buildings and were built in the 1930’s by the Civil Conservation Corp (CCC). We were contracted as mechanical, electrical and plumbing consultants authorized to do business in the Commonwealth of Virginia with experience in evaluating, and designing the renovation of the cabins that house overnight guest for the State Park system.
Location: Commonwealth of Virginia
Owner: Department of Conservation & Recreation
Type: Renovation
Budget: $11,000,000
Cabin Renovations
Project Info Continued ….
The existing cabins were to be completely renovated on the interior and the exterior and would include new larger kitchens, new bathrooms, new electrical, plumbing, and mechanical systems and new finishes.
Our engineers assessed the existing conditions in the cabins including fire protection and made design decisions that helped energy savings, increasing available space, increases comfort and longevity.
Designers suggested the installation of on-demand 13kW -18kW electric water heaters instead of 40 gallon tank heaters. It was also recommended that the refrigerators and stoves installed were all standard size appliances.
The contract originally called for 24″ apartment size appliances but the smaller appliances cost more and would limit the guests. All the cooking areas received stove exhaust hoods to ensure the fumes were vented outside.
Enlarging the kitchens involved eliminating the kitchen doors. This meant guests needed to walk behind the cabin to gain entrance so new porch lighting was added along side of cabin used as the approach entering the cabin.
HVAC units were specified to have low refrigerant refrigerant switches to avoid compressor damage and trap switches to avoid moisture damage from overflowing drain pans.
The showers were upgraded to tile finishes and equipped with low flow/high pressure shower heads.
