HVAC & AIR QUALITY
HVAC IN THE HOTEL KITCHEN
Julian Shine, Managing Director at Shine Catering Services, explores why FMs should insist on a catering-specific and balanced ventilation system in kitchen environments.
It is a viewpoint generated from bitter experience, but I can’t stress enough the importance of a catering-specific ventilation system in professional kitchens. You would think it nonsensical that the manufacturer of a passive ventilation hood, designed to service the volume flow rates and capture containment overhangs required by the cooking equipment for compliance with DW 172-2018 V2, could be leant on to solve a building’s ventilation issues. So did I.
Much more often these days, the consultants developing the tender specifications for the building's systems do so in isolation from each other’s designs with an expectancy that the main contractor on the award will sort it all out. This results in theoretical services being installed within a building months before the catering fit-out contractor is appointed. Increasingly they have major divergences from those required to feed the expected catering systems.
One such area is the integration of the building’s ventilation with the catering-specific ventilation. This will often be undertaken as an arithmetical exercise, with the consulting engineer not perceiving the real-world effect it will have on the performance of the extremely sensitive balance within the cooking area.
If your ventilation consultant has used the kitchen canopies to provide the majority of general room air change rates for the whole building with supply air distributed around the building, check that they haven’t created a wind tunnel within the architectural design. A high velocity of air across any cook line will destroy the containment capabilities of a correctly ventilated and sized canopy.
In addition, a kitchen must remain under negative pressure to prevent the escape of odours to the surrounding building, with more sensitive environments targeting larger differentials between the extract and supply rates. Natural infiltration into the kitchen will then provide the balance of between 25% and 5% of your extract rate.
50 | TOMORROW’S FM
If your cookline has a large volume flow rate associated, be mindful of where this balancing air will come from and its effect on doors. If it's a relatively open kitchen, there are usually few issues, but if it's a closed facility in a new airtight building, doorways can be rendered difficult to pull open from the outside of the kitchen or permanently sucked open.
The purpose of the catering ventilation system is to provide a safe and comfortable working environment for the operators, protect the building fabric by containment of the cookline plume, and to provide a serviceable transit through the building’s fire compartments to an appropriate intake and discharge point. This is best provided by an independent catering design without integrating the ventilation of other areas within a building.
Even when the kitchen has been designed well and the volume flow rates have been calculated correctly, it is always essential that the effect of the velocities of air within different areas of the kitchen are considered as makers or breakers of success.
www.shine.co.uk/manufacturing/ventilation Support from ventilation experts
Shine’s enhanced ventilation design and fabrication service delivers flexible, effective and compliant ventilation systems for hotel kitchens.
The updated modular systems allow greater flexibility in design, which means more filters within the filter banks to support compliance with DW 172, setting the benchmark for safe and effective ventilation in commercial kitchens.
Shine offers a complete end to end solution from design to installation, with experienced consultants to guide you through the process and feature-rich design capabilities. which allow for the inclusion of cooling spots, induction cooling, entrainment jets, emergency lighting and access hatches.
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