A restaurant’s kitchen exhaust hood control panel. In a restaurant, no exhaust means no cooking, and the fire code agrees.

The panel is a CaptiveAire DCV-1111, a demand-control ventilation system: a touchscreen, a pair of variable frequency drives, and a controller that speeds the exhaust and make-up air fans up and down with what the cooks are doing. The exhaust fan it runs is a five-horsepower upblast unit rated at 3,300 CFM.

Inside, the story was on the stainless: a scorch mark behind one of the small circuit boards. Electronics in a closed box in a hot kitchen depend on the enclosure’s little cooling fan, and they don’t last long without it.

The panel’s own label, for the file: model, job number, and the warning that more than one power source feeds it, which matters before anyone opens the door.

A hood control panel is HVAC, it’s electrical, and it’s life safety, all in one box, and most kitchens never open it until it fails. For your staff, keep it that way: more than one power source feeds it. Book it on the same schedule as the hood cleaning, so a technician checks the enclosure fan, looks for heat marks and clears the dust.

If it heats or cools, we handle it. 📞 718-802-1700

Service: Commercial HVAC service.