What are the hidden costs of converting a house to a medical centre?
When you are converting a house to a medical clinic of any description, you need to consider the cost. What are the hidden costs in transferring the use?
To be compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), you must provide disability access to all the doorways. They must be 850mm clear with 530mm left side clearance and passages must be a certain width. To make these changes, there is a lot of engineering and carpentry works which will multiply the costs out very quickly. In order to comply, you may need to completely rebuild a lot of walls and doorways.
In order to provide disabled access to the building, you will most likely need a ramp built with a 1 in 14 maximum climb. It can often be quite costly to fit a ramp in, particularly in a tight space.
In any medical clinic, whether it be GP or chiropractor, you must have body protected circuits, which means every room has its own independently certified safety circuits. In order to cable all of these and add new cabling for surgical lights, plumbing lines for basins etc., a lot of wall linings are removed. Sometimes big sections of ceilings need to be taken out to be propped up with structure above.
Air-conditioning can also be a large cost, as you must comply with the Building Code of Australia (BCA) regulations in relation to fresh air supply. The cost of retrofitting plumbing services is also something to consider.
Car park number regulations must also be worked around, and the cost of either providing these within your land area, purchasing car parks nearby or paying for an exemption must be factored in.
Please give us a call to find out more about considerations or help with your house conversion! Gavin at ICON INTERIORS, 0439 002 575 or 1300 764 151.
Other videos in this series you may be interested in:
#1 problem converting a house to a clinic – town planning
#2 problem converting a house to a clinic – building permit
#4 problem converting a house to a clinic – Do you have the correct registrations?
Problems converting a house into a medical clinic – Klint case study