We worked for two days, yes.
One of the restaurants from a well-known chain. It stands in a village that is just big enough for one such restaurant. Neighbors are complaining about the smell of food. Something needs to be done. There are two tons of correspondence among four parties: engineers from the restaurant chain, the company that installed the ventilation, the firm that owns the odor removal solution, and the restaurant’s management. Photos: pipes outside, pipes inside, the roof with the exhaust system, a view of the neighbors’ house with an arrow pointing to it – see, that’s them. Blueprints. Approvals. A solution has been found.
1. An ozone generator needs to be installed. This device generates ozone, which, when mixed with exhaust gases, neutralizes odors, making everyone happy. Yes, a solution exists. However, not everyone is willing to shell out for it.
2. The ozone generator works as follows: clean air from outside enters it, and the air is ozonated as it passes through special discharge electrodes. The ozonated clean air is then mixed with air from the exhaust hoods above the fryers and grills, and as it travels through the exhaust ducts, ozone, being a very active oxidizer, neutralizes odors and grease particles.
The ventilation system looks like two large ducts that both draw in dirty air from the left and right sides of the kitchen, extend to the roof, connect together, and then lead to the exhaust fan through a “tee.” The left duct runs above the grill, while the right one runs above the fryer and also over the dining area. To allow the ozone to react properly, it is necessary to extend the system by another 8 meters, which means relocating the exhaust fan further away on the roof and laying a pipe of that length across the roof.
We install the ozone generator in the ceiling. We bring fresh air from the storage room to it (and at the same time, we ventilate the storage room), then this fresh, already ozonated air is drawn in through the left and right ducts near the exhausts above the grill and fryer, where it mixes with the dirty air and goes up. All of this operates from a single fan on the roof, yes.
And all of this is located 150 kilometers from the office. We’re leaving at 5 AM. There are two reasons for this – to get everything done while the restaurant is closed and to avoid working in the heat on the roof.
We’re on our way. It’s beautiful. There’s fog over the lush green meadows at dawn. There are few cars on the road. From the restaurant’s roof, there’s a view of the village. The neighbors who complained have a donkey braying. Somewhere, a rooster is crowing. In the distance, you can hear a hum, either from the highway or the airport.
We’re working. We’ve turned off the exhaust system, disconnected it, and moved the whole 300-kilogram unit away to reassemble the electrical parts. We’re busy both inside and outside. We’re running out of time. There’s a brewing rebellion down in the restaurant. The working grills and fryers without the exhaust are turning the kitchen into a little hell this summer. No, nobody is frying anything. But they’re all turned on because that’s their schedule – to be on. We managed to finish everything downstairs and escaped the heat. We worked up on the ceiling with a grinder, connecting tape, couplings, and other fittings. By the way, we found a lot of liquid oil in the ventilation. If we had known, we wouldn’t have turned on the grinder. This is quite explosive. We took photos to show the management. At half past eleven, a manager comes up to us on the roof, all impressive, and in the language that is more familiar and closer to us, which he speaks perfectly, explains that it’s hot down there, and the customers in the restaurant are saying that we need to do something to get everything working right now.
What to do? We pull the ventilation unit back to the still unfinished duct on the roof. We connect it. We turn it on. Everything was already ready downstairs. We leave, planning to come back tomorrow. And we left just in time. The sun was starting to get hot, and I could have gotten burned. I didn’t really want to work in a sweater.
The next day, we leave an hour earlier. After all, it’s Friday, and we want to get home sooner. The heat is still the same, and so is the time. The moon, the dawn, the donkey, the starlings, and a rooster in the distance – everything is as usual. Oh yes, it’s five in the morning, and there’s no one in the restaurant.
We’re climbing onto the roof. We’re plugging in an extension cord from the outdoor outlet. Every restaurant like this has one, which is good to know in case your Tesla’s batteries die at night. We grab a folding ladder from the van and head up to the roof. Just like seasoned thieves. By the way, there are solar panels up there worth about ten bucks, but nobody knows that. And that’s not even counting all the expensive climate control equipment. We’re gathering everything on the roof. Slowly, carefully. Sealing the seams.
A restaurant has opened. For now, only through the back entrance. We went downstairs to start fine-tuning the system. It’s not working. Dirty air is being sucked into the ozone generator, which shouldn’t be the case. We’re fiddling around for a long time, measuring, playing with the valves that we conveniently installed in the system. It’s not working. And the reason is that the team of smart people communicating via email found a solution but didn’t take into account that, in any case, the two exhaust ducts would have different pressures, and the air through the ozone generator would flow either from left to right or from right to left. We’re not taking the initiative. A work order is a work order. In general, it’s all clear. The intake part of the ozone generator needs to be equipped with a fan to push the air into the generator so that both output channels from the generator always work to expel air, regardless of the pressure difference between the left and right exhaust ducts. That’s what we left with. At least we got home early, closing the work order. But we’ll have to go back again – to install the fan. Or to implement some other solution that the brainy team will agree on.