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Outdoor Design Guide & Tips by BBQ COACH
Location - Location - Location
The BBQ Coach Rule For Design
Form follows function. Always think about how well your outdoor kitchen will best function
for your cooking, dining and entertaining needs.
Then design a beautiful form around that function. Make sure to consider function now as you select your location.
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KEEP IT CLOSE!
Make your outdoor kitchen an extension of your home not a separate destination.
Imagine when your cooking how often you will need to go back and forth to your inside kitchen
for drinks, ice, meats, etc to cook with on your outdoor kitchen. This is why I always recommend to
keep it as close as possible to the rear door of your house. You want to keep it convenient.
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Keep Your Party Together
Keeping your guests together near the cook makes it much more fun for the cook.
No matter how comfortable you make the outdoor space people have a habit to congregate
in or near the house. Don't pick a location where the cook will be lonely and misses all the party.
If you have to locate it farther from the house make sure it is the place to be. Add plenty of fun
elements to keep the party together. And make sure to include extra storage and food prep space
to help reduce trips back and forth to the inside kitchen.
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Don't Block Your View
If you have a beautiful swimming pool or yard feature that you enjoy looking at from inside your home
make sure not to block your view by putting the kitchen in the middle of it. I had one client who put his island
outside the windows with a split bar counter and he could not keep an eye on his kids swimming. He ripped
the whole thing out and relocated it to the other side.
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Design in Zones instead of the working triangle uses for indoor kitchen design.
Prep Zone, Cooking Zone, Serving Zone and Entertaining Zone.
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Screening & Privacy
Consider privacy when choosing a location for your new outdoor kitchen space.
Most people don't want to be in plain sight of their neighbors when entertaining or relaxing with the family.
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Create a secluded space with the addition of structures or natural elements like shrubs, hedges, and trees.
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Sun and Shade
BBQ often takes place in the heat of the day during the summer months.
Locate your kitchen under existing shade or plan to add new sources of shade.
At BBQ Coach we used to include umbrella holes built into the counter tops of our
serving islands to give some shade when needed.
Natural shade from trees and vines is the best.
Deciduous plantings lose their leaves in winter, allowing the sun to shine through
the cold winter months.
How about Power?
Natural Gas Or Propane for your Grill?
Its a lucky break when you have a gas stub on the rear outside wall of your home.
But for the rest of us do we pay thousands of dollars to run a new gas line or just settle
for propane? This is up to your time frame and budget. If possible I would go with
natural gas. Consult with a plumber and if your on a tight budget ask him how much
he can discount the installation if you dig the trench? If you go propane End Zone BBQ 20" Propane Drawer is your answer as it can fit larger propane tanks that last longer.
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Electricity
Consult with an electrician for your electrical needs. Grill with lights and a rotisserie,
a refrigerator, warming drawers it all can require a lot of electricity and require its own
circuit.
Kitchen Storage - The End Zone Difference
For decades, outdoor kitchen components have been stuck in the past—
limited to short, cramped 20- to 24-inch cutouts originally engineered around bulky concrete block construction.
End Zone BBQ Kitchens breaks the mold as the industry’s first full-size door and drawer system engineered specifically for modern steel frame outdoor kitchens, delivering true floor-to-countertop capacity that rivals your indoor kitchen cabinets.
Instead of losing precious interior space to filler strips, extra framing, and wasted air pockets, End Zone components slide seamlessly into steel framing to give you up to 50% more usable dry storage for large cookware, platters, and grilling gear.
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Best of all, you get full-scale luxury, heavy-duty 304 stainless steel construction, and deep storage functionality for around the same price as other brands' miniature, block-sized units.
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Plan to equip your kitchen with its own set of knives, bowls, towels, napkins
oven mitts, a corkscrew and other items you will use at every cookout.
Finished counter heights
Here are the industry standard heights.
Standard cooking height is 36-38" high.
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Bar serve counters vary from 42" to 46" high.
Bar stools are typically 28"
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Bar counters should be at least 18" deep
Allow 24" width for each seat at the bar
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Standard table height is 30"
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The easiest way to create a serving island is to use
End Zone BBQ 4ft Bar Height modules.
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If you wish to create a split bar counter which is a lot more work.
Check out the End Zone 4ft Welded Steel Split Bar Counter frame kits.
Improper ventilation and gas leaks from residential appliances trigger thousands of structure fires and claim hundreds of lives every year across the United States
—with the CDC reporting over 400 carbon monoxide fatalities annually and the NFPA recording thousands of fires tied to flammable gases and grill leaks.
In an outdoor kitchen, confined cavities can easily turn a tiny leak into an explosive hazard without continuous airflow. Built-in undercounter refrigerators provide a natural advantage here: the perimeter cutout and motor clearances create functional gaps that circulate air and help passively vent trapped gas.
To maintain a clean, high-end aesthetic without sacrificing safety, vents should be installed on the island's end panels or rear face where they remain out of direct sightlines.
Crucially, vents must always be placed on opposing sides to guarantee cross-ventilation, positioned low (within 6 inches of the ground) for heavy propane or high (near the countertop edge) for lighter natural gas, and kept completely unobstructed by internal storage or framing.
Types Of Outdoor Rooms
Outdoor Dining Room
Size the patio based upon the number of guests you plan to host.
A 48" round table can seat 6-8 people.
The minimum patio diameter for one 48" round table is 10ft6"
This allows enough space to pull out chairs, but not much walk around space.
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If you plan more than one table allow 3ft space for people to pass by.
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Planning a pergola over the dining area makes it feel more like a room
and is beautiful at night with hanging lights.
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Outdoor Living Room
A living room patio can be so relaxing.
Size the patio around the furniture you will use here.
A big trend in outdoor living room furniture is to use
deep seating patio furniture.
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Deep seating is like your indoor couch and chairs.
Plan 16 to 18ft for a nice size living room and leave 3ft
pathway clear of furniture to allow good traffic flow through
the yard.
Bistro Patio
Create a beautiful bistro patio in a small intimate space.
A fantastic space for 2 people to have a quiet conversation.
Works great in a side yard like the photo.
A standard size is 6 to 7 ft