Fire protection for Chicago restaurants & food service

What you are required to do

The three things that fail a restaurant inspection

• An out-of-date hood system tag. Six months goes quickly, and the tag is the first thing an inspector looks at. It is visible from the pass.
• No Class K extinguisher, or one too far from the line. The hood system does not remove this requirement. The unit has to be within 30 feet of the cooking appliances, and there has to be a sign at the pull station telling staff to fire the system first.
• An appliance line that no longer matches the system. Swap a range for a flat-top or add a fryer at the end, and the nozzles are aimed at the wrong equipment. The system will still discharge — into the wrong place.

If your kitchen still has a dry chemical hood system

It is not UL 300 compliant and it needs replacing. Modern vegetable cooking oils burn hotter than dry chemical systems could reliably handle, particularly for reignition, which is why the industry moved to wet chemical agents. Most insurers now treat a non-UL-300 system as a condition of cover rather than a recommendation.

This is a planned job, not a service call. Cylinders, agent, nozzles and detection all change. It is far better to schedule it against a slow week than to have it forced by a renewal date.

New restaurant, or taking over an existing space

Taking over a space with an existing hood system is where the risk sits, because you inherit a system engineered around somebody else's menu. If the previous tenant ran two fryers and you are running a char-broiler and a wok range, the coverage is wrong from your first service.

Get the system surveyed before opening rather than after. It is the difference between a scheduled re-engineering job and a closure notice.

What we do not do

We do not clean hoods, plenums or ductwork — grease cleaning is a separate licensed trade. We service the suppression system inside the hood. Book your cleaner first and our inspection afterwards, because cleaning is one of the most common ways for a nozzle to get knocked out of alignment or a link to be disturbed.