Stove in Home Ec room?

[Yikes]

Not sure whether this belongs here or on another forum.

I have an old project that is a private transitional living facility - apartments for young mothers with children – and the operator would like to convert an office into a life-skills training room for the young women. Among other things, they would like to install a small “residential” type gas stove to teach the women how to cook.

It is important that this setup look as much like “home” as possible. They want a residential exhaust hood, not a big ansul fire hood. They want regular wood cabinets, not stainless steel commercial stuff, sitting off the floor. Etc. etc.

I get the feeling we’ll run afoul of fire codes and health dept. codes. Do you have any suggestions as to how to approach this?

 

[FredK]

I would ask how this is to be used. They just cook meals for their family or open to all.

Had one come up in a similiar vein for an elderly apartments "kitchen" area. They had no problem with the full blown appoach when explained the options.

 

[FM William Burns]

Simple cost effective suppression

I get the feeling we’ll run afoul of fire codes and health dept. codes. Do you have any suggestions as to how to approach this?

It's not a commercial cooking operation so I doubt it. If you are concerned try using this with an addition of an easy access gas shut off valve:

http://www.stovetopfirestop.com/

 

[cda]

let them cook, you are already in an apartment setting, and if they are not daily cooking for the entire building, not much different then someone cooking in thier apartment

 

[Yikes]

FredK - in theory, they aren't cooking for anybody... they're just learning how to cook. Having said that, i assume they'll pass it around to taste.

FM Burns - yeah, I really like those firestops, and use them in all my housing projects... they save a lot of money on water damage if they can extinguish a fire before the sprinkler system is set off.

 

[peach]

why would you treat it any differently than any other apartment?

We have a school with a classroom for disabled students to learn life skills... which includes a kitchen.. since it's unlikely there will be an ansul system and commercial cooking equipment where they eventually live, you need to make them familiar with what they will see "in the real world"...

Most home ec rooms have residential fire extinguishers installed... if these girls cook like I did when I was younger.. that's a good idea!

 

[Builder Bob]

Try a home guardian system,,,, as an alternate method. We allowed this as an option for technical skills operations... We required a keyed switch to ensure unsupervised operation of the stove could not occur as a condition of using the home guardian system

 

[peach]

If you're trying to teach life skills, you need to equip this "cooking facility" like what they are going to find. Unsupervised operation? Put a lock on the door.

These young ladies and their children are probably not going to land a "high end" apartment to start out.

 

[FredK]

FredK - in theory, they aren't cooking for anybody... they're just learning how to cook. Having said that, i assume they'll pass it around to taste......

Kind of make it a residental unit IMHO then.

 

[Yikes]

Lock on the door is a great idea.

Thanks!

 

[brudgers]

Needs hood

 

[hlfireinspector]

It's not a commercial cooking operation so I doubt it. If you are concerned try using this with an addition of an easy access gas shut off valve:http://www.stovetopfirestop.com/

Those things work great. Have alot of unsprinklered apartments that this stopped the fire at the stove. Note shelf life stamped on side!!!!!!!!

 

[FM William Burns]

Here is one for electric stoves and glass top burners that I did product testing and evaluations for years ago:

http://www.pioneeringtech.com/safe-t-element.html