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Restaurants, bars and kitchens
A canopy pulling hard over the line has to have air coming back in from somewhere, or the kitchen fights itself and the dining room gets the smell. We design extract, make up air and front of house cooling as one system, because that is how the building behaves.
CoolIn designs and installs kitchen extract, make up air, front of house cooling and cellar cooling for restaurants, bars, cafes and pubs across Manchester and the North West. Hospitality work is programmed around service, normally overnight or on a closed day.
What makes kitchens different
This is the call we get most often in hospitality, and it is almost never the canopy fan. A kitchen is an air balance problem before it is a cooling problem, and until the balance is right nothing else helps.
A canopy can pull a serious volume of air out of a kitchen every hour. If there is no designed route for replacement air, the extract pulls it through the only openings available, which is usually the dining room and the back door. The fan strains, the extract rate drops below what it says on paper, and the kitchen stays hot.
That backwards flow is exactly why. Air that should be leaving through the canopy travels the wrong way into the front of house instead, taking the cooking smell with it. Balancing the kitchen fixes the dining room as a side effect, which surprises operators who assumed they needed more cooling out front.
The dining room needs comfort cooling sized for a full house on a hot Saturday, with people, candles, lighting and a bar all contributing. Trying to serve it from the same system as the kitchen gives you a dining room that smells and a kitchen that is never cold enough.
Keg and cask cellars want holding steadily in the low to mid teens, and a cellar that drifts costs you beer quality and yield before it costs you anything else. It is a different kind of cooling from the dining room and it belongs in the design from the start.
The options
Four separate systems in most restaurants, and they have to be designed together. Quoting one of them in isolation is how operators end up paying twice.
The canopy, grease filters and ductwork carrying the extract to a discharge point that does not upset the neighbours. Kitchen extract ductwork is built to DW/172, with access panels so it can be cleaned rather than sealed up and forgotten.
A supply unit bringing replacement air back into the kitchen, tempered so the brigade is not standing in a draught of cold outside air in January. This is the part most often missing from a kitchen that does not work.
Cassettes or slim ducted units sized for a full room, positioned so nobody is sitting directly in the throw and the staff side is not left out. Zoned separately from the bar, which runs warmer.
A dedicated cellar unit holding the room steady year round, with the condenser sited where its heat and noise are not a problem. Sized on the cellar volume, the ground it sits in and the delivery pattern, not on floor area.
Budget
Installed prices covering equipment, labour, commissioning and handover. Hospitality varies more than any other sector we work in, because the duct route to a discharge point can be trivial in a retail park and very involved in a city centre building.
Guide prices, installed. Confirmed at site survey.
Single canopy, small front of house. Installed prices
Full kitchen and dining room. Installed prices
Larger venue or long duct run. Installed prices
These are guide bands, not quotations. The duct route drives the price on most kitchen jobs. A discharge straight out of a rear wall is cheap. A run up four storeys of a city centre building to a roof termination, through a landlord's riser, is not. We establish that route at survey before anyone talks about a figure.
Safety and consent
Kitchen ventilation carries obligations that comfort cooling does not, and an insurer will ask about all three of these after a fire.
Where gas appliances sit under an extract canopy, BS 6173 requires an interlock so the gas supply cannot be on unless the ventilation is running and proving flow. It exists to stop combustion products collecting in a kitchen where nobody would notice.
It is a commissioning item, not an optional extra, and it is one of the first things an environmental health officer or a gas engineer will look for.
The interlock is wired, proved and certificated as part of the handover pack rather than left to a separate visit.
Kitchen extract ductwork is specified to DW/172, which covers construction, fire dampers where the duct passes through compartments, and access panels at intervals so the whole run can be cleaned.
Grease build up in a duct is a fire risk and a standard question on a commercial insurance policy. A duct with no access panels cannot be cleaned properly, which tends to become the operator's problem rather than the installer's.
Access panels go in at design stage. Retrofitting them into a finished ceiling costs several times as much.
Extract discharge is a common source of complaint and a common planning condition, particularly on a city centre site with flats above or behind. Conditions usually cover the termination height, the noise limit at the nearest window, and odour control.
Carbon filtration or an electrostatic unit handles odour where a condition requires it, and both need a maintenance regime to keep working.
Where a planning condition already exists, send it to us with the survey request and the design will be built to satisfy it.
How it works
A free survey, a written price with the heat load working shown, and a programme set around your hours. The four stages are the same on every commercial job and are set out in full on the commercial page, along with servicing plans and what to do about breakdowns.
We fit hospitality systems across Manchester city centre, Ancoats, the Northern Quarter, Chorlton and the wider North West, including Manchester, Salford, Stockport, Warrington and Liverpool. See every town we cover.
Other business types
Each sector has its own page, because a server room and a hair salon are genuinely different jobs. The commercial overview covers what applies to all of them.
Questions
Almost always because there is no make up air. The canopy can only remove as much as can get back in, so without a designed supply the fan pulls against the building, the real extract rate falls well below the figure it was sold on, and the kitchen stays hot. Adding a make up air unit usually fixes it without touching the canopy.
It is a design requirement rather than a single clause you can point at. A kitchen extract system has to work as designed, and it cannot without replacement air, so building control and any competent designer will expect it. The gas interlock also proves flow, and a starved system can fail to prove and shut your gas off.
Yes. Hospitality work is normally done overnight or on a closed day, with the kitchen handed back clean and the gas proved before service. Out of hours labour is charged at standard rates. A full fit out is programmed in writing so you know which sittings are affected.
Possibly, and it is better to know first. Noise at the nearest residential window and cooking odour are the two usual conditions, and both are answered at design stage with termination height, the unit's sound data and odour control where required. Retrofitting that after a complaint is the expensive route.
Yes, and on a bar it should be designed alongside everything else rather than bolted on later. A cellar wants holding steadily in the low to mid teens, and the condenser needs a position where its heat and noise are not somebody else's problem.
More often than comfort cooling. Grease filters are a routine cleaning job for your own team, while the ductwork and fan need a scheduled clean by a contractor at a frequency set by how heavily you cook. Our servicing plans cover the cooling side, and the extract clean is scheduled against your insurer's requirement.
Free survey
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