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Commercial · Restaurants & Commercial KitchensRestaurant HVAC — Kitchen Ventilation, Make-Up Air & Cooling
Restaurant HVAC is three systems that have to agree with each other: the hood exhaust pulling air out of the kitchen, the make-up air unit pushing tempered air back in, and the rooftop units trying to hold a dining room full of people at a temperature nobody notices. When one drifts, another one shows the symptom — which is why a cold dining room in January is so often a kitchen problem. We service, balance and replace all three across Burlington, Oakville and Hamilton.
A single restaurant runs more separate pieces of mechanical equipment than most owners realize. There is the grease hood and its exhaust fan, a gas-fired make-up air unit, one or two packaged rooftop units over the dining room, washroom and dish-pit exhaust, and condensing units for the walk-in cooler and freezer. They were almost never installed at the same time, by the same trade, or for the current menu. The first thing we do at a new restaurant is walk the roof, tag what is actually up there, and put it on one page — because in a leased plaza unit half of that list may not even be yours to maintain.
The dining room is the hardest room in the building to condition. Load arrives all at once at seven o'clock on a Friday, heat rolls out through the pass every time the line gets busy, storefront glass on a west-facing unit holds afternoon sun until close, and the patio door gets propped open the moment anyone complains. Meanwhile the rooftop unit above it was sized for whatever the space was two tenants ago. We measure supply air at the diffusers over the seats that actually get complaints, look at where the return is, and fix delivery before anyone talks about a bigger unit — an oversized rooftop short-cycles, and a short-cycling unit stops pulling humidity out of a room full of people on a July night off Lake Ontario.
On the kitchen side, the exhaust and the replacement air have to be treated as one set. If your hood spills, your doors fight you, or your burner keeps locking out, the detail work lives on our make-up air unit page. Two honest scope notes: grease cleaning inside the hood and duct is a specialized certified trade and we do not do it, though we will service the fan, motor, belts and controls once they have been cleaned. Walk-in and freezer refrigeration is a refrigeration contractor's work — we handle the comfort and ventilation air, and we will tell you which contractor's problem you actually have rather than billing you to find out.
Restaurant kitchens in this area concentrate on Brant Street and around Village Square in Burlington, in Kerr Village and Old Oakville, and along Locke Street and James Street North in Hamilton. Those are tight sites with shared roofs and no room for a crane at dinner service, so scheduling matters as much as the wrench work: roof access before prep, indoor work after close, and equipment ordered before anything gets shut off. New hoods and new gas-fired units are permit work through Halton Region or the City of Hamilton building department, and we handle that paperwork. Start with commercial HVAC for the overview, or call the shop and describe what the hood is doing.
Equipment we install and service
The Type 1 grease hood over the cook line and the upblast fan on the roof. We service the fan, motor, belts, hinge kit and the controls that start it, verify the interlock to the make-up air unit, and measure what it is actually exhausting rather than trusting the nameplate.
A direct or indirect-fired cabinet that replaces the air the hood throws outside and tempers it so the kitchen is workable at −15°C. It is a TSSA gas appliance, it has a burner and safeties that need annual testing, and it is the single most neglected unit on a restaurant roof.
Packaged heating and cooling over the seats, usually ducted to a diffuser layout designed for a previous tenant. Coil cleaning, economizer dampers, condensate drains and refrigerant checks are what keep it holding temperature through a full house.
Small fans that quietly change the whole building's pressure. A dish pit throwing steam with no replacement air will pull odour from the kitchen into the dining room, and a dead washroom fan turns into a customer complaint long before anyone calls it an HVAC issue.
What goes wrong in these buildings
- The dining room hits 26°C by seven on a Friday and propping the patio door is the only thing that helps.
- Servers are cold at the front tables while the cook line is unbearable, and one thermostat controls both.
- The hood smokes back over the front edge as soon as the char-broiler and both fryers are going.
- Gas is up and nobody can tell me whether it is the make-up air unit or the rooftop burning it.
- The only window you have to work on my roof is between 10 and 11 in the morning.
- My landlord says the rooftop is my responsibility and I have never once seen a service report for it.
How it works
Every unit tagged and photographed, exhaust measured at the hood face, interlocks tested, and the whole set written up on one sheet with make, model and serial. You end up with an inventory you can hand to a landlord, an insurer or the next technician.
Pressure, exhaust and supply get fixed before anyone quotes equipment, because a building that is running negative will make a brand-new rooftop unit look like it failed. Often the fix is an interlock, a filter bank and a fan adjustment rather than a purchase.
Loud and disruptive work goes in before prep or after close, parts are on the truck before the shutdown starts, and anything that takes a dining room out of service gets scheduled to your slowest service rather than ours.
Common questions
Who pays for the rooftop unit — me or my landlord?
It depends entirely on your lease, and it is worth reading before you call anyone. Net leases in plaza units commonly put routine maintenance on the tenant and full replacement on the landlord above some dollar threshold, but we have seen it written every possible way. What we can do is give you a dated, photographed condition report per unit, which is the document that settles those conversations quickly.
Can you work while we are open?
Roof work usually yes — nobody in the dining room knows we are up there. Anything that involves shutting off the exhaust, dropping ceiling tiles over seats, or cutting into ductwork gets booked outside service hours. We would rather do a job once at nine at night than twice around a lunch rush.
Do you clean kitchen exhaust hoods?
No — degreasing the hood, the duct and the upblast fan is a certified specialty with its own inspection paperwork, and you want that record from a firm that does only that. We work on everything mechanical around it: the fan and motor, the make-up air unit, the interlock and the balance. We are happy to be there the same night the cleaners are so the fan gets serviced while it is already apart.
We are putting in a bigger hood — do we need a bigger make-up air unit?
Almost always. Adding a char-broiler or extending the hood raises the exhaust rate, and every extra cubic foot going out the roof has to come back in from somewhere. If it does not come from a make-up air unit it comes under the front door and down the flues of your gas appliances. We size the replacement air to the new exhaust rate and re-check the building pressure once both are running.
Related
Keep the building running.
One licensed team for installs, maintenance contracts and 2 AM calls.