kitchen vents in multi unit brownstones

First time poster, long time lurker. Thanks everyone for posting such great info here.

We are redoing a bathroom and kitchen in a brownstone, 4 unit co-op we just bought, and we have open access to the main building vent shaft. The co-op has asked us to see if there’s anything we can do to improve building ventilation. Apparently, the ground floor cooking smell spills into the 3rd floor kitchen. Also, the vent shafts don’t do a great job at evacuating air.

Our GC says this is a common problem and suggests installing a fan on the roof to evacuate the vent (also, the exit on the roof is ancient). But would we need to run electric down to each unit so that the vent fan isn’t on all the time (to prevent a loss of heat)? Anyone have experience with this? We are also considering installing a back flow valve in our unit’s vent at least so we don’t get the smells. Curious if any other brownstoner has solved this problem.

mojo

in General Discussion 1 year and 8 months ago

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nyc_sport | 1 year and 8 months ago

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Lots of small apartment buildings were built/converted 30-40 years ago with common kitchen exhaust vents and a fan on the roof, much like bathroom fans. But this setup cannot be used to actually vent an exhaust hood, unless you are going to get that scrubbed regularly as the grease is a fire hazard. It is a smell/steam transport device, and usually it is just connected to a timer somewhere. Our building that was converted from industrial to “high end” apartments in manhattan in the late 1980s has a chimney to the roof with a fan on a timer for each of the bathroom and kitchen lines. The constant on fan (during waking hours) means that the cooking smells (like the bathroom smells) will not be transported to other apartments along the way. This has no greater heat loss than a bathroom fan.

ejcarroll | 1 year and 8 months ago

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Reside in bottom two floors of four story brownstone with two story extension. Kitchen is in top floor of extension. Have large commercial style Viking range with oversize range hood with motor on roof. Really effective in exhausting smoke and no amount it cant handle. Variable Fan speed control is located on the hood. As it doesn’t exhaust right under third floor tenants window never receive smoke complaints. However believe code may require an exhaust pipe that runs to top of building and some distance above roof line.

mojo | 1 year and 8 months ago

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Wow, thank you Steve. This is an interesting perspective that I hadn’t considered. I’ll send it out to the other units to see what they think. Appreciate the thoughtful response.

mojo | 1 year and 8 months ago

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Wow, thank you Steve. This is an interesting perspective that I hadn’t considered. I’ll send it out to the other units to see what they think. Appreciate the thoughtful response.

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 8 months ago

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there is a mechanical engineer who writes on here. his name escapes me just now. it may be worth consulting with him on the best way to approach this. when i think of he screen name, I will post it. someplace i have his email. if i can find it, I will tell him about your post.

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 8 months ago

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commercial buildings and some homes including the home of a poster on here have exhaust fans on the roofs. they come in all different sizes and sit under a hood (you have seen those mushroom shaped domes on roofs).

in commercial kitchens they are on on/off switches. we had a bunch of these in an older commercial building and when we were not running the a/c to bring in fresh air in the summer, we did run these fans. we put them on intermatic timers so as to run them only when the building was occupied because they do pull the heat out. i would say you have to put a switch in each unit. i would consider some sort of timer (intermatic) in each unit so someone does not leave one of these on all the time.

be aware of something here. the system in your building might have been installed a long time ago, before modern fire safety protection came to being. in commercial buildings (i do not know the requirements for residential and really don’t know them for commercial; we hired experts) modern ventilation systems that move air between spaces have damper doo rs on fusible links to contain a fire and help keep it from spreading. I do not know at what point any improvements to this system will cause you to have to install modern protections, but it is a question worth raising and researching (seriously) and even if you legally do not have to install safety measures, perhaps they are worth considering anyway (say if you have a fire alarm system, you can tie the fan motor to that to shut down in case of a fire).

Check the NFPA website and they may explain some of this, as well as the nyc building code. maybe consult with a ventilation system specialist or HVAC person.

Steve

mojo | 1 year and 8 months ago

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[2023-10-11 10](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:Gker:2023101110.12.31.jpeg.jpg) [2023-10-07 11](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:PxvA:2023100711.47.17.jpeg.jpg)

mojo | 1 year and 8 months ago

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