Pilot Light Poll

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jim on March 31, 2009 at 10:27am

C.

Turning off the gas is unnecessary, and a pain at 5am in the morning to relight all of the pilots.
No need to leave the hood on with just the pilots lit.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Kuck on March 31, 2009 at 10:28am

I'll start, even though I don't work at a particular restaurant any more. The company I most recently worked for did:

A.

I'll also vote for the woman I was talking to because she isn't on Fohboh. They do

B.

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Permalink Reply by David King on April 2, 2009 at 5:31pm

For the near term, leave the pilots on and and hood on. For the long term, install variable frequency drives for the hood motors and let the automatic controls handle it from there.

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Permalink Reply by Bretton Lammi on April 2, 2009 at 5:43pm

C

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Permalink Reply by Dave Ott on April 5, 2009 at 11:08am

With our Business of cleaning the restaurants hood systems.
We must sometimes blow out the pilot lights to cover equipment with burn boards and plastic, and even unhook the equipment and remove.
The problem with older equipment that has not had the pilots lights or gas turned off in awhile, is that the pilot lights on older fryers, stoves, and pizza ovens can sometimes be a pain to re-light, and in some cases require repair.
Pilot knobs that do not turn due too major grease buildup on them or knobs missing, and so on can get costly

I would leave them lit, and turn the fans off.

In the event of a fire the suppression systrem goes off most codes require the gas to shut off, and the fans to go on anyways to pull the agent and smoke out anyways.

Also some cooks (Notice I said some), and other staff showing up in the morning for breakfast prep do not know how to light pilot lights, or may have a problem re-lighting them.

Then someone will get the call to get out of bed, and light them early in the morning with possible delayed breakfast for your customers.

Just my 2 cents

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Permalink Reply by Steve Paterson on April 5, 2009 at 11:24am

I still have nightmares about having to relight pilots.
It amazes me how much of a pain in the ass it can be.
Some are worse than others....old fryers.....and especially ovens and flat top grills.
Sometimes, they are located in the craziest of places.

I vote C (and will shoot the floor cleaning guy next time he sprays the hose all over the equipment and knocks the pilot lights out)

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Permalink Reply by Bryan on April 9, 2009 at 6:48am

c.

We turn the hoods off at night. Also, during the day we turn the air conditioning fan setting to "on" in the dinning room and boh, to help with the make up air from the hoods suction. At night we switch it to "auto" with the hoods off.

I'm sure the cost of running the pilots all night is insignificant. I would look into making sure that the usage of gas equipment is meeting the demand of the business. Meaning, during slow periods of the day maybe turning one fryer off if you have three or half the side of a chargrill when it is not really needed. Make sure the cooks don't come in and automatically turn every piece of equipment on as soon as they walk in the door. Especially if you don't open untill three hours later.

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