As the UK's sole importer for Barka of Italy, Penguin Engineering is your supplier for manual gas and electric pedestals for tables, chairs, motorhomes and many other applications.
In the video below you can see our post system removable pedestals - suitable for converting tables and beds in your boat, motorhome, campervan, horsebox or many other environments. These are inexpensive and adaptable, they're easy to use and they need no maintenance.
A post system will consist of a post like this, a bottom base like one of these, and a top base like one of these. They can be very easily swapped around so if you want to change from a dining table to a lower coffee table or if you want to convert from a table to a bed or you may just want to remove the post all together and create more space in your cockpit or your saloon.
Barka posts uniquely have this bulbous looking shape at each end with a slight taper. There's also a corresponding taper in the sockets. The idea behind this design is that they fit very snugly into the sockets with no wobble but when it comes to taking them apart they just pull apart really easily and they don't bind in the hole.
You can see here that we've got two sizes of posts a wider one which is 80 mil and a narrow one which is 55 mil. The wider the post, the wider the base, the greater the stability.
So how many posts do you need to support your table? Well if it's going to be a coffee table or a little occasional table table you really probably only need one post. For larger dining tables you'll need two posts and if you have a bed that has no other means of support then you'll also need two posts.
All of the bases you see here can be used either on the floor of the cockpit or the or the saloon, to support the post, or they can be used to support the table at the top of the post. The 55 mil tube you see here has a choice of two diameters of base one is 170 the other is 220 mm. For the 80 mm post you have a wider base of 270.
If you regularly remove your table to clear space then we suggest you take one of these recess bases because they sit almost flush to the floor. Of course you need to make sure that your boat has the facility to cut a big hole in the floor before you do it that should be fairly obvious. You need to also bear in mind that because it's recessed you'll lose a little bit of the height of the post so we could, if you like, we can order you a larger post to compensate for that loss of depth here. When the when the table's been removed and the post have been removed you also have these little blanking plugs to stop you catching your toes.
To help you work out the length of the post aim for about 700 mm for a typical dining table, for a coffee table something like 4 to 500 mm and if you need to convert a table to a bed it could be anything really but a lot of boats have very low combings downstairs so you may need a very low post to come to to make that work but don't worry about any of that because we can get all of these posts cut to exactly the length you need.
All the dimensions you need are loaded onto our website and if you need any other help just give us a call on 02392 465607. View our post system here