Kitchen Restaurant Systems

Properly operating systems provide kitchen owners 24-hour fire protection of cooking equipment and exhaust hoods. Kitchens are potentially high hazardous areas and are required to have this additional protection per the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 17A, and California Fire Code Article 10.

If the building has its own fire sprinkler system you will more than likely see one of these pre-engineered kitchen systems over the cooking equipment and protecting the exhaust hood as well.  Once one of these systems is activated (either automatically or manually) the kitchen system will discharge liquid chemical in the hazardous areas and extinguish the fire. It is designed to interact with the grease that is burning, and upon discharge of the system it will cool down the metal surfaces as well as create a soapy foamy barrier of chemical called saponification that will help prevent oxygen from further fueling the fire. In an effort to aid in extinguishing a fire, the fuel source to the cooking equipment will also shut down automatically through the kitchen system and annunciate an alarm if one is provided.

Kitchen systems are serviced semi-annually to ensure continued proper operation and that it will work the way it was designed to. Over the years, as the way food is prepared has changed, the fire system design had to change as well. In November 1994, UL-300 was introduced which increased the amount of chemical that is now discharged into the hazardous areas. The fire systems that were installed prior to November 1994 do not meet this new UL-300 standard, so by the second service of 2008, these systems will have to be retrofitted to meet this existing code.