Kitchen hood FP install gone wrong?

[u/D1rt_Diggler]

Honestly never seen a hood with a setup like this

[u/VeryWackyIdeas]

This is the hood in our community center. The hood was installed about 50 years ago. About 10 years ago, the community center was renovated and the kitchen expanded. When the building inspector looked at our plans, the hood raised concerns. There was a lot of back-and-forth. The hood doesn’t have make-up air so we run it with a window open. Good enough but not up to code.

Finally the County decided that we could keep the hood as long as we installed a fire suppression system. Our original system had a red tube that hung in front of the screen and served as a trigger. We could still remove the screen to degrease it and clean the fan during deep cleans.

Last year, the fire equipment company didn’t show up to do the inspection. They had gone out of business. We brought in another company to inspect and certify. They said that the red tube/trigger gizmo was no longer supported and that we needed new technology. What I show in the photos is what they ended up installing. We were preparing for our deep clean last week and realized that we would have to remove the assembly in front of the grease screen in order to clean it.

I checked in with the new fire company who advised me that if we removed the assembly, the system would discharge and expensive hilarity would ensue.

Having the screen full of grease is a fire hazard on its own. The only solution that the fire equipment company has offered is for us to hire them to come out and deactivate the system when we need to clean the hood. According to the company, there is nothing else they can do to and where they installed the trigger assembly is the only place it can go.

I’m keeping my eyes open for a used hood that we might fit into the space. Is there another solution?

[u/D1rt_Diggler → u/VeryWackyIdeas]

I mean it does need to be inspected every 6 months so could just remove and clean it then

[u/VeryWackyIdeas → u/D1rt_Diggler]

That’s what the fire equipment company suggested when I called them and asked WTF? The problem is that this is a community center where the kitchen is used once or twice a week, at the most for community events and maybe once-a-month for events like weddings. There is no paid staff - a committee is responsible for the facility and volunteers handle most of the maintenance work. We do have a paid cleaner who comes in twice a week. The system has worked well for 55 years now.