Restaurant HVAC Load Calculations and Air Balance
Engineer stamped
Cooling and heating loads, outdoor air calculations and air balance reports for restaurants, with the kitchen hood exhaust and make-up air carried through.
In a restaurant the kitchen hood decides how the whole building's air behaves. Every cubic foot the hood exhausts has to be replaced, and how it is replaced sets the outdoor air load and the pressure in the dining room. We prepare stamped cooling and heating load calculations for restaurants, with the outdoor air calculation and the air balance report.
Buildings we work on
- Quick-service and fast-casual restaurants
- Full-service restaurants, bars and lounges
- Cafes, bakeries and dessert shops
- Conversions of retail or bank space to a restaurant
Most are between 1,300 and 8,400+ square feet.
What you get
- Room-by-room cooling and heating loads by ASHRAE methods
- The outdoor air calculation, to the governing code for the jurisdiction
- Air Balance Report, with the hood exhaust and make-up air in it
- A zone map, where the building has more than one zone
- A stamped, plan-review-ready document
How restaurants differ
Exhaust and make-up air. The hood's exhaust rate, the make-up air that replaces it and the outdoor air the dining room needs all have to add up. The air balance report shows that they do, room by room.
The hood is usually designed by others. The kitchen designer or the hood supplier normally selects the hood. We take its exhaust and make-up air rates into the load and the air balance. To check a hood's exhaust rate, our free Commercial Kitchen Exhaust-Hood Calculator follows the 2024 International Mechanical Code and ASHRAE, and there is a walk-through of it on our blog.
People. A dining room holds far more people for its size than an office or a shop, so the ventilation air and the latent load are a large share of the total.
Kitchen heat. Cooking appliances add heat to the kitchen whether or not they sit under a hood. The appliance list comes off the kitchen drawings, not from an allowance.
Where we have done this work
- Florida: Tampa, St. Augustine, Kissimmee, Orlando, Lakeland, Sarasota, Bradenton, St. Petersburg, Boca Raton and elsewhere
- Texas: Frisco, McKinney, Richardson, Coppell, Rowlett, Mansfield, Richmond and Austin
Adicot provides the same services in every state it is licensed in. The codes each state has adopted are on our state pages: Florida, Texas and the rest from the services page.