Cooking indoors with SM150 or FEC100

Saw you post the same question a couple of times, but I think this is the best place to get an answer.

Do you own one or are you looking to buy and put in a restaurant? You also asked about an FE, are you looking to compare the two?

Maybe the application would help get the right answer. Home use or restaurant use?

For fire suppression, you need to find out what your local codes are, not as much what we might think.

Thanks Smokin' We own a SM150 and are going to buy a FEC100 and plan to open a restaurant in June. The building we are buying does not have an exhaust system and I was wanting to see what others have had to do. I'll be getting with the fire marshall next week to get an official ruling on the fire supression. We've thought to avoid the cost an hassle of an ansul system that we might even build a "smokehouse out back but again I'm not sure what to do for venting the smoke. Any advise from the pros on this forum will be greatly appreciated.

This is the right forum to ask, lots of folks here have them, so they should jump in. Until they do, just read through this forum so some ideas. Lots of good restaurant info here.

Let them know they are both UL listed (depending on your 150?) and the new FE's are UL/NSF, sometimes they like that.

Yes they both have to be vented otherwise the whole restaurant will become your smokehouse.

The 150 doesn't need a vent attached, but needs an exhaust hood. If the code allows, a simple exhaust hood with the right amount of draw will work for the 150 The FE can be connected to 5" tubing and vented outside, folks do them in trailers that way instead of a hood -- direct vent.

I'd look at the design of where you're going to put them. When you open the doors, steam and smoke will escape and grease will get on the floor. The "smokehouse" might be a good fit if the place you're looking at doesn't already have the venting and supression.

I've seen some recent threads of putting in the right venting and fire suppression and it costing over $10,000 so that's where knowing the code will help steer you.

come and get it,
hi and welcome!!!!
we have our second sm150 mounted indoors as you are talking about doing. we are using the optional cookshack hood system for this unit and it works great. from the outlet on the sm hood we ran the same semi-rigid flexhose that we use on the fec100 to the exterior and capped it with a weatherhead. we are fortunate here that our fire marshall views both the fec100 and sm150 as ovens and in our locale that means no fire suppressor in the hood is required.
our first sm150 and the fec100 are mounted in a mobile food dispensary under a 5 foot commericial hood system. on the fec we have run semi rigid flex hose with a heat rating of 435f from the fec to the hood. the sm just sets under the hood with no hose required. i did replace the hose after 2 years of use not because it was bad but because it did not look nice enough for my tastes. even though the semi-rigid looks light it went thru an fec fire unscathed so i saw no reason to replace it with anything heavier. to get an idea of the fec installation go to pro's and search under 2 greyhound rig pics we hope.
hope it helps some and i hope your fire marshall views them as ovens like ours did. the ul label really helped with that one since ul lists the sm as an oven.
jack

Thank you for your comments PC, I'll know tomorrow what they will require here as far as a fire supression system is concerned.

DEpending on location you will need both the OK of a fire marshall and a building inspector. In some loactions this can be easy and in some it can be a royal pain. I have CS150 and both the new and old FEC-100's. My favorite is the FEC-100, the CS-150 is good but the FEC-100 is Great.

Have a 150 installed in a 14 foot trailer certified kitchen without a hood. Vented directly to the outside through the roof using 3/4 inch conduit and through the ceiling. This works great for us. By the way we do not have a problem with smoke escaping around the edges of the door. The only problem is the probe which is normally dropped into the cooking cavity through the smoke exhaust port. We are contemplating drilling a second hole in the top of the cooker similar to the present smoke port to put the probe wire through. We would run the probe wire through a rubber stopper which would surround the wire and plug into the top of the new port so as to keep smoke from excaping at that point. Keep stokin and smokin.

Thanks everyone for all of the helpful advise. Fire Marshall said today that we'll be able to stay indoors without fire supression but we will need to have a class 1 or 2 hood. At least I can skip the ansol system. If I learn anything else from this I'll let everyone here know.

Again thanks to U fellow smokers....

man that is great news.
me and peg are pulling for you. keep fighting the good fight and remember to breathe. that's all peg and my daughter tell me. breathe. nice part is every time my daughter kat comes over she has a new tattoo so this is easy

thats great news, that you are not required to have ansul, but just a hood. however, i must stress that you should put one in, anyway.
trust me! you got to give ourself room to grow.
you may want to add a fryer, or grill, somewhere down the line(as restaurant grows, so does the demand for fried foods), and then, it would be nice to have that ansul already there.
plus, its your only defense, against kitchen fires, when you are not there. its like insurance, there when you nee it...