There are many factors to consider when renovating or designing kitchen and dining spaces. Here are the top three MEP considerations, when choosing MEP design services for your food services space:
- Ventilation for the Kitchen
Choosing the right commercial kitchen ventilation system can have a major impact on energy consumption and costs. The MEP engineer and the architect team must work together to determine the proper sizing and location of ventilation hoods and the make-up air units.
- Specialty Lighting and Controls
Choosing the right lighting fixtures and layout for your dining space can be challenging, considering the various functional needs within your dining and kitchen spaces, notably task lighting for staffs and ambient lighting for your patrons.
A good engineering and lighting designer can help determine the proper options for your lighting system.
- Temperature and Humidity Control
Occupancy comfort is of the utmost concern when it comes to MEP design for dining facilities. Your restaurant occupancy can fluctuate between peak and off-peak hours, not to mention the time allotted to kitchen and cleaning staff preparation.
Therefore, coordinating temperature and humidity controls, and incorporating occupancy-based demand can be vital to maintain the proper temperatures and humidity levels throughout the day, while optimizing energy consumptions.
These simple guidelines help put you at ease when starting to design and develop your own dining facility. MEC International, with our experience in MEP engineering, can provide assistance to ensure your commercial project is on the right track to save energy, reduce costs, and set out to be the dining facility of choice to your customers.