Commissioning: testing hoods, refrigeration and plumbing before opening night

Passing inspection is not the same as surviving a Saturday

One owner of a smash-burger shop posted help, grease pan from hood fills up twice everyday about a month after opening. The new hood's grease pan was overflowing, the hood was dripping, and grease was coating the backsplash. We saw the thread only as search excerpts, so we do not know the cause. We also do not know what inspections or approvals the shop had. The point here is timing: the problem showed up under real cooking volume, a month into service.

A general contractor with a restaurant background makes the preventive case in 10 Things I Would Keep In Mind Before My Buildout, which we read through an archive: simulate a full Saturday service before opening. Commissioning is the structured version of that advice. Each system is tested against what it was supposed to do, under realistic load, while the installers are still under contract and before the final check is written.

What to commission, and what evidence to keep

Make a list of systems before the last month of construction and assign a responsible party for each test. Many tests are run by the installing trade or a specialist, such as a test-and-balance contractor for air systems or the suppression vendor for the hood fire system, with the owner or representative witnessing. Ask for written results, not a verbal 'it's good.'

Test procedures, system by system

Hood and make-up air: run every appliance under the hood at operating temperature with food on it. Watch whether smoke and vapor stay inside the hood's edges, including when doors open and staff move across the line. Check that the space is not strongly negative. Signs include doors that are hard to open, whistling at door gaps or pilot flames that waver. Compare measured airflow to the design values in the test-and-balance report. Confirm filters sit in the correct orientation and that grease drains toward its cup or container, not onto the cooking surface. The design values come from your engineer and the equipment listing, not from a rule of thumb.

Refrigeration: let each unit reach its set point empty, then load it with product at realistic temperatures and open doors at service frequency. Record product temperatures, not only the display. Check the cold-holding temperature your adopted food code requires for refrigerated food. DC Health's Plan Review Guidance Packet (DC, Dec 2019 ver. 8) asks whether refrigeration can store refrigerated foods at 41°F (5°C) or below. Freezers are tested separately: they must keep frozen food frozen. Do not read a refrigerated-food figure as a freezer target.

Hot water and sinks: the same DC packet asks whether hot water of at least 100°F and cold running water under pressure are available at all handwashing sinks, and whether self-closing metering faucets run for at least 15 seconds. Measure the hot water at the farthest hand sink while the dish machine and prep sinks are running, because recovery under load is where problems appear. The packet also lists minimum light levels for different areas: 110 lux (10 foot-candles), 220 lux (20 foot-candles) and 540 lux (50 foot-candles). A light meter makes this a five-minute check. These are DC plan-review figures. Other jurisdictions set their own, so use the code that applies to your site.

When a new hood drips or overflows

If grease is overflowing, dripping or coating surfaces, treat it as a defect for the installer and designer to diagnose, not a cleaning chore. Possible causes include filter installation, drain path or slope, a mismatch between hood design and actual cooking volume, and air-balance problems. Only an inspection can say which applies. Call the installer promptly, in writing. If grease is accumulating where it creates a fire hazard, stop the affected cooking until it is made safe.

Do not improvise a bigger catch container or modify the hood yourself. Any change to grease collection should be one the manufacturer approves for that hood. Keep photos, cooking-volume notes and the dates you emptied the container. That record helps the installer diagnose the cause and documents the warranty claim, which our related hood article discusses in more detail.

The full-load shakedown service

The shakedown is a controlled commissioning exercise for staff, not a public service. Run it only after the installing contractors confirm each system is safe to energize and operate, and after any test authorizations the fire, building or health authorities require are in place. Do not serve the public until all operating approvals are issued. Within those limits, schedule at least one rehearsal that matches your busiest expected service, not a friends-and-family evening at half volume. Fire every appliance at once. Run the dish machine continuously. Cook the actual menu at expected ticket counts, open the walk-in as often as a real rush would, and run the bar and prep sinks together. Assign one person who is not cooking to walk the building with a clipboard and thermometer, reading breakers, drains, hand-sink temperatures, hood capture and refrigerator displays every 15 minutes.

Schedule the shakedown early enough to fix what it finds. Some fixes, such as a re-balanced fan or a replaced breaker, take a day. Others, such as a larger water heater, an added circuit or a refrigeration component, can take weeks. A shakedown held two days before opening can only tell you what will go wrong on opening night.

Hypothetical worked example: a shakedown deficiency log

All details are hypothetical. Twelve days before opening, an operator runs a full-load shakedown and logs nine deficiencies. Each one gets a severity, a responsible party and a date. Severity A means stop the affected activity until a qualified person has diagnosed and fixed it. B means it must be fixed, retested and, where applicable, signed off before opening. C is limited to purely cosmetic items with no code or safety element, which can be finished after opening with a dated commitment.

Two items are A: grease collecting at the hood's front edge with all fryers running, and the farthest hand sink dropping below 100°F during continuous dish-machine use, which falls short of the DC packet's stated minimum. The hood item goes to the installer the same day, and fryer use stops in testing until the installer has inspected it. Five items are B. One breaker trips when the second fryer and the hot-holding cabinet start together. The walk-in takes much longer than its start-up sheet suggests to recover after a door-propped delivery. A floor sink backs up when the dish machine drains. A dry storage corner measures below the required light level. And the panel directory is unlabeled. Even as B items, the tripping circuit, the backing-up drain and the slow-recovering walk-in are taken out of use in testing until a qualified tradesperson diagnoses them. No food is held in the walk-in until it holds temperature on a logged retest. Two items are C: a scuffed stainless kick plate and a paint touch-up by the back door.

The water-heater fix has a 9-day lead time. That leaves 3 days of margin before opening, so it is tracked daily. The operator also plans a second, shorter shakedown after the A and B fixes, to confirm they worked under load.

How commissioning fits the DC pre-operational inspection

DC Health's inspection explainer (DC) describes the pre-operational inspection as checking that a facility is 'up to code' with respect to placement of sinks, refrigeration, heating elements and other items, following menu and plan review. The plan-review packet says a pre-opening inspection with equipment in place and operational is needed to determine compliance. In other words, the inspector expects working equipment. Commissioning before that inspection means you find out first whether the hand sinks reach temperature and the coolers hold. The inspection checks compliance on its day. Your commissioning record shows how the systems behave under load. You need both. Other jurisdictions run similar pre-opening inspections under their own adopted codes.

Sign-off before final payment

Make commissioning a contract deliverable, not a courtesy. Include it in the closeout line of the schedule of values, and make release of final payment and retainage depend on it, as described in our progress-payment article. Passing a test is one condition of payment, not the only one. Final payment still follows every other contractual and legal condition, such as the punch list, closeout documents and lien waivers.

• Every system on the commissioning list tested, with written results
• Test-and-balance report and suppression acceptance documents on file
• Full-load shakedown completed; second shakedown after major fixes
• Every A and B deficiency closed and retested; C items dated and assigned
• Start-up sheets, manuals and warranty registrations handed over
• Staff trained on shutoffs, filters, grease containers and alarms
• Signed commissioning record filed with the closeout package