Craig West is passionate about ultra violet style hoods. He is the distributor of Halton BC in Canada and is responsible for some 200 UV installations. Working closely with the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Airport Authority, that area of Canada has seen an explosion of UV installations. Recent installations include 17 UV hoods at the Pacific Centre Mall and 60’-0” of UV hoods at Quest University. Additionally, 6 new UV installations have been installed at YVR, Vancouver’s airport and 5 retrofits are now under way.

Michael Meszaros with the City of Vancouver has investigated the effects of using this technology and is including information in the city’s latest guidelines. Final approval is expected in May 2007. We will keep you posted as to when they are published.

Craig wrote to us after our recent UP YOUR STACK article titled “What We Currently Know About Ultra Violet CKV Systems” in which we discussed the current state of technology. We had written that the current life expectancy is 8000 hours and that newer longer life bulbs may be coming into the marketplace. Craig confirms that the current bulb replacement is actually once every two years based on 12 hour run times, not every six months as we had stated.

In our article we talked about how policy differs among users including daily cleaning in one major chain. Craig states that the current Halton Canada bulb cleaning schedule is 1600 hours or 3 times a year. That leaves a lot of room in between to determine individual unit or chain policy.

In the Vancouver area installations, Craig uses the term “totally clean ducts and fans” for UV installations he has been involved with over the last five years. We visited three of these installations about two years ago and can confirm that fact for those installations. He states that there are three main reasons:

1. Good mechanical filtering at the front end of the system.
2. UV lights destroying the grease that passes through the mechanical filters.
3. Pac Man effect of the 03 cleansing ducting especially at non-cooking times.

Craig has documented all the case studies to back up his UVC technology claims. One of those case studies is a comparison between two identical steak house stores in two different cities running the same hours. Both are equipped with air pollution units. Store #1 does have a water wash hood system while store #2 is equipped with UV. Otherwise, they both serve identical menus and are equipped the same.

Store #1 in Victoria, BC - $17,000 per year filter replacement and cleaning cost.

Store #2 in Calgary, AB - $2,500 per year filter replacement and bulb cleaning.

We wish to note for the record that these facts are independent research by others including Craig West. You can email Craig at Craig West [jbw@helix.net] for additional information.