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A primer on UL-listed kitchen ventilation: understanding the basics of certain key features is essential to proper design.

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The kitchen is often a key area in a commercial facility, and proper ventilation of this area is critical. In this article, I want to focus on the three facets of ventilation design I consider most important: commercial kitchen hoods, fire-suppression options and pre-manufactured raceways.

Commercial Kitchen Hoods

Why should one investigate the use of a UL 710-listed hood?

The International Mechanical Code Chapter 507, "Commercial Kitchen Hoods," makes exceptions to the Code's requirements for commercial kitchen hoods for construction and exhaust CFM level designs for listed and labeled UL 710 hoods. The main function of the UL 710 test is for safety of the hood during a fire condition. The test procedure makes sure that, during a fire condition, the hood is liquid tight and does not allow the grease to migrate through any of the joints or seams, which would allow for the fire to follow the same path and spread outside of the hood canopy.

During the fire condition, the test also monitors the temperature of all electrical components in the hood to make sure they do not exceed their temperature ratings during a fire condition. The UL 710 test also has a visual smoke capture test to verify the minimum exhaust flows that the hood will capture smoke at during the cooking process for different cooking surface temperatures.

It is important to remember that the visual smoke capture test is conducted by the...

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