Shunt Breakers foe Exhaust hood with Ansel System

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Vortac5

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Long Island
Hi All
I need some assistance or direction for wiring circuits for power and exhaust under the hood with the Ansel System.
After 32 years I have never been directly involved start to finish.
I have 3 dedicated outlets under the hood also 1 circuit for the exhaust hood. The Ansel Tech left me his control with NC /C/ NO
I have order 3 single pole shut breakers. However I am not sure if thats enough. I thinking re feeding exhaust hood I believe I need to run control wires back to the shunt breakers. However I am not sure if the dry contacts can support. Do the shunt breakers contacts carry load or are they dry also. I was contemplating a lighting contactor. The walls are closed. And we are finished. Or thought we were. I am waiting on the breakers.
Any help would be greatly appreciated


Thanks
 
The wires that control the coil on a shunt trip breaker don't carry any of the circuit load.

I don't work on a lot of kitchen hoods but I have done a few of them over the years. The company I work for does not use shunt trip breakers, we always use contactors. Using breakers, contactors, or both is fine. Whatever gets you there is all right.

You did not make any mention of the exhaust fan and make up air.
 
I recently had to use shunt trip breakers to shut down two electric ovens associated with an Ansul system. If you don't have to shut down anything with a high amperage draw you probably won't need a shunt trip breaker. Make sure you get the FULL operating procedure of what has to occur in normal mode as well as an Ansul operation.

This was the scenario in my situation :
Normal mode
  • A wall switch turns on both the exhaust as well as the make-up air fan
  • Another wall switch turns on the hood light
  • If whomever is cooking forgets to turn on the exhaust manually the hood thermostat turns on both fans
In manual Ansul operation mode
  • Exhaust fan remains on and make-up air turns off
  • Hood light turns off
  • Electric ovens turn off (if ovens are gas a solenoid will shut the gas supply off)
  • Alarm system is triggered

If the operation of the system is different in your area make sure you get all the info up front. Otherwise you'll end up reqiring the system 3 times like I did.
 
Shunt Breakers

Shunt Breakers

It sounds like I can make that work. However the exhaust hood has its own circuit. So i was thinking I re feeding hood fan off one of the outlets circuits that were extra. It looks like I can parallel the normally closed / common from the Ansel Controller to all three shunt breakers in the panel ??
I do not see any provision of any make up air. In this bakery. No fire alarm No AC fan shunt down. This was not part of our scope given to me last minute, With opening in a week.

hmmmm
If I take the 3 circuits from panel. Install those circuits in and out of a 3 pole definite purpose contactor
(damn much cheaper ) bell just went off
Bring 110 volt in an out of the Ansel Controller. From the Fan circuit load side. That might work

Have to see how time consuming vs shunt breakers at this point. With finished walls

What you think

Thanks
 
Ansel

Ansel

I was replying at same time.
This is last minute so it sounds like they will have a problem with make up air. I do not see any make up air. Unfortunately this is a napkin job added on at the end.
I asked the Ansel guy and he said theres many ways to do it. However i do not know what the AHJ ( Authority Having Jurisdiction )
is going to ask for. Geez do not want to get married to this. And I am in it.
However I have not done anything yet Aside from ordering Shunt breakers. Sounds like I have to be careful.
I just the installer I do not want to become the engineer.
Just they need to speak to the Fire Marshall
 
Vortac5 said:
I was replying at same time.
This is last minute so it sounds like they will have a problem with make up air. I do not see any make up air. Unfortunately this is a napkin job added on at the end.
I asked the Ansel guy and he said theres many ways to do it. However i do not know what the AHJ ( Authority Having Jurisdiction )
is going to ask for. Geez do not want to get married to this. And I am in it.
However I have not done anything yet Aside from ordering Shunt breakers. Sounds like I have to be careful.
I just the installer I do not want to become the engineer.
Just they need to speak to the Fire Marshall
Click to expand...

Many jurisdictions REQUIRE that the exhaust air stay ON during the suppression system discharge. You do not want to hook this up to one of your shunt breakers. The Ansul system itself is listed to perform it's function with the exhaust on or off, so in that sense the Ansul tech isn't going to care one way or the other.

The codes require that makeup air units IF PRESENT must shut down. You may not have any make up air depending on the system design. You can use one of your shunts for this purpose. Are the outlets under the hood general convenience, or do they supply electrically fire appliances like fryers? They might be 240 or 3-phase outlets. Your single pole shunts might not be sufficient. The best option would be to put all the circuits that should be shut down on a small sub panel and then just shunt the panel. Frankly, I prefer contactors since if you use the ones that require power to turn the loads "on" you have a fail safe system.

The gas valve may or may not operate on a solenoid. The Ansul system can accommodate a mechanical release for the gas valve and probably 90+% of the installations I've seen go this route.

The thermostat that goldstar mentioned goes in the plenum or duct space and is wired in parallel with the exhaust switch.
 
gadfly56 said:
Frankly, I prefer contactors since if you use the ones that require power to turn the loads "on" you have a fail safe system.
Click to expand...

I said the same thing a few months ago on this forum and proceeded to get hammered by engineers that shunts are just as fail safe. :roll:

To me it became funny because I remain convinced electrically held, normally open contactors are a better design for this.
 
iwire said:
I said the same thing a few months ago on this forum and proceeded to get hammered by engineers that shunts are just as fail safe. :roll:

To me it became funny because I remain convinced electrically held, normally open contactors are a better design for this.
Click to expand...

Well, not by this engineer. If you use a shunt trip breaker, you're supposed to monitor the electrical source for the shunt coil, and no one ever does that. If you tap one of the hots on the load breaker to supply power to the coil for the shunt breaker that's about as close to "just as fail safe" as you can get, assuming the load breaker is listed for double tapping. Still not as good as a contactor.
 
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