Pizza Oven and Hood Clearance

[Level41]

Hello everyone,

We have been running into this issue when assessing spaces for our pizzeria, the 48" deep hood clearances aren’t adequate for the overall depth of the pizza oven (ovens are 43-45" deep). Our county requirements are to have 6" around the cooking surfaces…however it’s hard to ascertain what a cooking surface would be when it comes to a pizza oven. Anyone with experience with this topic please let us know. Thank you in advance!

 

[ThePizzaPirate]

I’ve had different counties come up with different calcualtions of cooking surfaces with hoods. The 6 inch clearance is locked in pretty good but there are differences regarding what the edge of the cooking surface actually is. Some say the opening of the oven and some say the edge of the conveyor or edge of the open door on a deck oven.

For my conveyor ovens I shoot for 6 to 12 inches past the edge of the conveyor and 6 to 12 past the front window of the oven. In my experience that captures the heat.

The hood itself is cheap. It won’t cost you much more to get a deeper hood. The engineering and istallation is what will cost you. In California we have so many regulations on hoods and cooking equipment that the total install cost is pushing $40,000 now.