What Does Restaurant MEP Design Involve?

Restaurant MEP engineering designs the kitchen exhaust and makeup air systems, gas distribution, plumbing and grease waste, hot water, and dining HVAC. Grease-producing cooking lines need Type I hoods with welded grease duct to the exterior, fire suppression, and balanced makeup air. The plumbing design includes grease interceptors sized to the fixtures, and the gas system is sized for the connected cooking load. Health department plan check reviews the kitchen layout and equipment alongside the building department's MEP review. The equipment schedule is the foundation document — every MEP calculation traces back to it. I don't start duct or pipe sizing until the cooking line is locked, because a fryer swapped for a charbroiler changes the hood type, the exhaust rate, the gas load, and the suppression design. Owners who finalize equipment late pay for the redesign in both engineering fees and schedule.

The exhaust design starts with the hood: sized to overhang the equipment, rated for the cooking duty, with the exhaust rate set by the hood listing and the equipment heat load. The grease duct runs from the hood collar to the roof termination — welded steel, pitched to drain grease back toward the hood, with access panels at every change of direction for cleaning. The fan is a listed upblast grease fan, and the duct termination keeps the discharge away from intakes, property lines, and anything the neighbors will complain about. Makeup air is the system people forget and then pay for. I design a dedicated makeup air unit — often with heating for cold climates — interlocked with the exhaust fans, delivering tempered air near the hoods so the kitchen doesn't have to steal conditioned air from the dining room. The air balance is deliberate: kitchen negative to dining for odor control, dining neutral to slightly positive to outdoors. Get the balance wrong and the dining room smells like the fryer line, which is a business problem, not just an engineering one.

Gas piping for a commercial kitchen is a straightforward sizing exercise with no room for error: the connected load of every piece of gas equipment, diversity factors per code, pipe sizing to keep pressure drop within limits, seismic shutoff valves where required, and combustion air for the equipment room. The plumbing design handles the grease waste through the interceptor, floor drains and floor sinks at every piece of wet equipment, a hot water system sized for the dish machine's recovery demand, and backflow protection throughout. Then there's the second reviewer. The health department reviews the kitchen for food safety — equipment materials, hand sinks, warewashing, ventilation — on drawings that overlap heavily with the MEP set. I coordinate the two review tracks from the start because a health department comment about equipment layout can move a gas line or a floor drain. Restaurants that treat health review as an afterthought discover it at the worst possible time.

• Type I hoods, welded grease duct, and fire suppression for grease-producing equipment
• Dedicated tempered makeup air balanced against the exhaust volume
• Gas piping sized to the connected cooking load with seismic shutoffs
• Grease interceptors, floor drainage, and dish-load hot water design
• Parallel health department and building department review coordination