Converting Second-Generation Office Space Into a Dental Office

A suite that was a law office or an insurance agency can make a good dental office. It is often in the right part of town, with parking, restrooms, and finished walls already in place. Second-generation space means a suite that was finished out for an earlier tenant, and landlords often lease it on better terms than raw space. The catch is that an office is built for desks and a dental office is built for chairs, and much of what a chair needs comes up through the floor. This guide covers what changes when you convert office space into a dental office, and what is worth keeping. For the full sequence from lease to opening, see our dental office build-out guide. For the broader choice, see second-generation space versus shell.

Trenching the slab for plumbing and vacuum

Each operatory needs water, a drain, compressed air, vacuum, power, and data at a utility box beside the chair. In a ground-floor suite those lines usually run in trenches cut in the slab, from each chair to the main lines and back to the equipment room.

The vacuum line drives the layout. It carries fluid and debris from the patient's mouth back to the pump, so most systems need the pipe to slope steadily toward the pump or separator, with no low spots where fluid can sit. A far-off operatory means a longer, deeper trench. Grouping the operatories and putting the equipment room near them keeps trenches short.

Before any cutting, the slab is scanned for post-tension cables (steel cables under high tension inside many North Texas slabs) and for existing lines. The sewer is checked with a camera for depth and condition. An office puts very little down its drains, so an old line may never have carried much. Find out before it carries a dental practice.

On an upper floor the lines cannot go in a trench. They pass through holes cored in the floor and run in the ceiling of the tenant below, which takes the landlord's approval, access to someone else's space, and a check of where the floor can be cored. BC Perio, a 3,312-square-foot periodontal office we completed in Dallas in 2014, sits on an upper floor with city views.

The compressor and vacuum room

A dental office needs a small equipment room for the air compressor, the vacuum pump, and usually an amalgam separator. The equipment makes noise and heat and runs all day. Place the room close to the operatories to keep piping short, but not against the consult room or a neighbor's quiet office. Give it a solid door, sound insulation, and enough cooling or ventilation that the equipment does not overheat, and vent the vacuum exhaust outdoors as the manufacturer requires. In an office conversion, an old storage room or server closet sometimes becomes this room, if it is in the right place.

Noisy equipment can sit near patients if it is built for. At Golpa Dental Implant Center in Dallas, a 6,700-square-foot finish-out we completed in 2017, the milling area is sound-isolated even though patients can see it from the lobby.

Electrical

An office panel is sized for lights, computers, and a coffee maker. A dental office adds the compressor and vacuum pump, sterilizers, X-ray units, chairs, lab equipment, and more cooling. Some compressors and pumps call for three-phase power, which not every office suite has. Check the panel and the building service before you sign: how much capacity the suite has, whether there is room in the panel, and whether the building can supply more. A new service from the building or the utility can take time.

Power and data at each chair come up through the same trenches as the plumbing. Plan for monitors, intraoral cameras, and imaging at every operatory, not only for the chair itself.

X-ray and ceilings

Office walls have no shielding. Rooms with intraoral units, a panoramic unit, or a cone beam CT should have their shielding set from the equipment manufacturer's requirements or a shielding design by a qualified physicist. Where shielding is called for (often lead-lined drywall), it goes into the walls and sometimes the doors. Panoramic and cone beam units also need floor space, wall blocking, and dedicated power. Registering the machines with the state is the practice's job; our build-out guide covers the Texas rule.

Office ceilings are a suspended grid set for desks. Ceiling-mounted operatory lights and monitors need support above the grid, tied to the structure rather than hung from the grid, and enough height to work. Supply air should not blow across the patient's face. An office may have one thermostat for a large area, while operatories, sterilization, and the equipment room each need their own control, and sterilization needs exhaust for the sterilizers.

What to reuse and what to replace

Second-generation space pays off when parts of it fit your plan. Good candidates to keep:

• Shell items. Demising walls, exterior windows, and the entry.
• Front rooms. Private offices as the doctor's office or consult room, the break room, and lobby finishes in good shape.
• Restrooms. Only if they meet the Texas Accessibility Standards. A renovation can require upgrades along the route to them.
• HVAC. Rooftop units with useful life left and enough capacity, with new zoning and ductwork.
• Ceiling grid. Where it lines up with the new walls.

Plan to replace carpet in clinical areas with a sealed, cleanable floor, walls in the operatory zone, and ceiling tiles in sterilization. Do not force operatories into old office walls to save drywall. That trade-off usually costs more in trenching and leaves a worse layout.

Munilla Dental in Southlake is a 2,600-square-foot suite with five operatories that we completed in 2017, inside Watermere Medical Plaza Phase II, a project we completed the year before. We will walk a space with you before you sign, and our first budget, an early range, is at no charge. A detailed estimate is priced later from the drawings.

Learn more about how we finish out and renovate existing space, and about our dental construction work. Structures and Interiors also builds new buildings from the ground up for practices that want to own their building.

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