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we were able to show that we were cleaner than regular 10-foot diffusion .”
Noting that the restaurant was on the ground floor of a five-story building – and had apartments directly above – architect Eric Behr of AB Design Studio in Santa Barbara noted that they couldn ’ t just exhaust the greasy smoke vertically through four floors to the roof . They instead exhausted it at a small portion of a secondstory roof . Because it was surrounded by apartments , though , it couldn ’ t be the traditional mechanical exhaust . Having the pollution control unit clean the air and remove the smoky grease was the solution , but units like that are massive – and the team didn ’ t have a roof to put it on .
“ We actually designed an interior platform above the kitchen for this PCU to sit on , and then Andy helped us figure out how big that needed to be and then how much ducting it needed , which was challenging because you can only have so many 90-degree elbows in the ducting and so forth ,” Behr said . “ It was a very complex challenge , and Andy ’ s team helped us figure out how to navigate that . Additionally , because the unit was then essentially within the space of the restaurant , we had to deal with concerns like vibration and mechanical humming and noise , and so we worked together to try to mitigate that as best as possible .”
Other challenges included working around existing columns in the historic building that had to be kept in place .
“ They had these existing historical ceilings and ceiling arches so we couldn ’ t do traditional ceiling-mounted air distribution . In most of the Finney ’ s restaurants , if you look up you ’ ll see ductwork visible in the air space above you , but in Ventura you won ’ t
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