A veterinary hospital is one of the few building types where starting from bare ground makes many hard problems easier. Drains can be set in the slab where the kennels will be. Walls around animal areas can be built for sound from the start. The air system can be laid out so odor moves one way. This guide covers the site, the layout, and the building systems for a new veterinary hospital. For room-by-room planning (radiology, surgery, finishes), see our guide to veterinary clinic design and construction.
Choosing the site
Size the lot for more than the building. A veterinary site usually needs room for parking, a covered drop-off, an outdoor relief area or play yard, a service entrance for deliveries and waste, and the detention or drainage the city requires. If you plan to board, the yard can take more land than owners expect.
Look at the neighbors. Houses or a quiet office next door raise the bar for noise and odor. A site where the building can sit between the street and the neighbors, with the yard on the side facing a commercial use, starts with an advantage.
Confirm zoning for every part of the business, not only the clinic. Many cities treat overnight boarding, outdoor runs, and grooming differently from an outpatient clinic, and some require a specific use permit with a public hearing. Our guides on buying land and site approvals in DFW cities cover the due diligence and the city steps.
Laying out the building in zones
Most good veterinary plans work front to back. The public zone is at the front: lobby, reception, exam rooms, and a quiet room for difficult visits. The clinical zone is in the middle: treatment, pharmacy, lab, imaging, and surgery, with sight lines from treatment to recovery. Animal housing is at the back: wards, isolation, boarding, and the service entrance. Exam rooms with a second door into treatment keep animals out of the public hallway.
In a new building, isolation can have its own exterior door, so a contagious patient never crosses the lobby. Boarding can be a wing with its own entry and check-in counter if boarding is a separate line of business. And the plan can leave an end of the building ready to extend if you expect to add exam rooms or kennels later.
Building drainage into the slab
Drainage is where ground-up construction pays off most for a veterinary hospital. In an existing building, kennel drains mean saw-cutting and re-pouring the floor. In a new one, the drain lines go in under the slab before the concrete is placed, and the floor is formed with the slope already in it.
Decide early between individual floor drains and trench drains (long, narrow drains with a grate) for runs and wash areas, and where hair and solids will be caught so the lines can be maintained. Plan cleanouts where staff can reach them. Washdown also raises hot water demand, so size the water heater for cleaning, bathing, and laundry together.
At Arlington Veterinary Center, a ground-up veterinary facility we built, the high-traffic animal areas have epoxy flooring and a built-in wet-dry vacuum system for cleaning. Systems like that are easiest to plan when the walls and slab are still on paper.
Noise: let the structure do the work
Barking is the most common complaint about veterinary buildings, from staff, clients, and neighbors. A new building can treat noise as part of the structure. Walls around wards and boarding can run to the roof deck and be sealed at the top, built of masonry or framed and insulated for sound. Kennel rooms can be placed away from the lobby, exam rooms, and the property line nearest to houses.
Watch the openings. Roll-up doors to a play area, exhaust fans, and roof units on animal rooms can let sound out. Locate the outdoor yard where its noise faces away from neighbors, and think about the hours it will be used. Inside, washable sound-absorbing panels and ceilings keep the kennel room itself from becoming an echo chamber for staff.
HVAC and odor control
Odor is mostly an air problem, and a new building lets you design the air system around it. Animal areas (wards, runs, boarding, isolation, and soiled utility) should be exhausted to the outside and kept at lower pressure than the lobby and exam rooms, so air moves from clean areas toward animal areas and not back. Many hospitals put animal areas on their own units, separate from the front of the building, and give isolation exhaust that is not shared with anything else.
Animal areas need more outside air than an office, and outside air in a North Texas summer is hot and humid. Plan the equipment to remove that moisture, not only to cool, or kennels will feel damp. An energy recovery unit, which uses outgoing exhaust air to temper incoming outside air, can reduce the load. Place exhaust outlets away from fresh air intakes, the front door, and the neighbors, and leave room on the roof or the ground for the equipment.
Boarding versus clinic
Decide early how much of the building is hospital and how much is boarding, because they are different buildings in many ways. A clinic is driven by exam rooms, treatment, imaging, and surgery, with daytime hours. Boarding adds kennels and suites, play rooms, yards, grooming, laundry, and food storage, with animals in the building around the clock. That means more drains, more exhaust, more hot water, and more noise control, and often its own entrance.
Richter Animal Hospital in Arlington, a ground-up building we built, combines the two: a surgical suite and treatment rooms alongside a kennel room with glass-front enclosures, a grooming room, an indoor play room with roll-up doors, a corridor of boarding suites, and a fenced turf play yard with shade canopies. A combined building works well when each part has its own zone and its own air.
Learn more about how we build new buildings from the ground up, and about our veterinary construction work. Structures and Interiors also finishes out and renovates existing space for veterinary practices that lease.
Common questions
Why build a new veterinary hospital instead of finishing out a lease?
A new building lets drains, slab slopes, sound walls, and separate air systems go in from the start, instead of cutting the slab and reworking an existing building. It also lets you size the site for parking, yards, and boarding. A lease can still work well when the space, the slab, and the landlord accept what a clinic needs.
How do you keep odor out of the lobby in a new veterinary building?
Animal areas are exhausted to the outside and kept at lower pressure than the lobby and exam rooms, so air moves toward the animal areas. Many hospitals put animal areas on their own units and give isolation its own exhaust.
Should boarding be part of the same building as the clinic?
It can be, if boarding has its own zone, its own air, and enough drains, yard space, and noise control. Boarding also adds overnight use, laundry, grooming, and sometimes its own entrance, so decide on it before the site and the plan are fixed.
Planning a new building, a finish-out, or a renovation? Tell us about it.