If your kitchen has fryers, woks, charbroilers, or open flame, the hood and the air system around it are the single biggest mechanical decision in your build-out — and the one most likely to come back and bite you if it's sized wrong. A fully engineered grease hood, fresh-air supply, and fire-suppression package for a typical GTA restaurant kitchen starts around $35,000 turnkey, with most projects landing $35,000–$95,000 depending on hood length, rooftop access, and how heavy the cooking line is. This guide walks you through the decisions Buildup makes with you up front, so the ventilation line item shows up on your quote with real math behind it — not a "we'll figure it out" placeholder.
The first decision is which kind of hood you're putting in, because it changes the price, the duct routing, the rooftop work, and whether a fire-suppression system is sitting above your cookline.
You need a grease hood the moment any piece of equipment puts grease into the air. Fryers, charbroilers, flat-tops, gas ranges, woks, salamanders, high-fat pizza ovens — anything that puts oil droplets into the exhaust. Grease hoods are stainless steel, have removable baffle filters, drain into a grease cup, run welded ductwork up to the roof, and require a wet-chemical fire-suppression system over the cookline.
You need a steam (vapor) hood when the equipment underneath only puts out heat and moisture — dishwashers, pasta cookers, steamers, combi ovens running steam mode, espresso machines under heavy use. No grease, no fire suppression, lighter ductwork, much lower cost.
There's a full breakdown in our grease hood vs steam hood guide for Ontario restaurants, but the rule of thumb on a site walk is simple: if you can imagine wiping oil off the wall behind that piece of equipment, it's going under a grease hood.
Decision rule: Fryer plus griddle plus range totaling more than ~150,000 BTU, or any wok or charbroiler at all — grease hood, period. Don't let anyone "value-engineer" you into a steam hood over a wok line. The fire inspector will catch it, and you'll be redoing the work after you've already paid for it once.
Hood capacity is described in CFM — cubic feet per minute, which is just how much air the fan pulls out of your kitchen every minute. The right number depends on what's cooking under the hood:
A 10-foot grease hood over a fryer-and-griddle line typically pulls 3,000–4,000 cubic feet per minute. A 10-foot hood over a wok line or a hotpot table can push past 6,000. That number drives the fan you buy, the duct size, the size of the make-up air system, and the rooftop opening — so it's the first calc your mechanical engineer runs and the first one Buildup writes onto the quote. We don't guess at it on the back of a napkin and we don't pad it; we run the table for the equipment list you've actually picked.
For hotpot specifically, where most operators want induction and table-side steam in the dining room, the air balance is its own discipline. Our hotpot restaurant build-out guide for the GTA walks through how the dining-room exhaust ties into the kitchen system without turning your front door into a vacuum seal.
Every cubic foot the hood pulls out of the kitchen has to come back in from somewhere. If you don't replace it deliberately, your kitchen goes negative-pressure: the front door becomes hard to open, the building's heating fights itself, cold air rushes down any vent it can find, and the hood itself starts pulling less air than it's rated for because it can't breathe.
The fix is a make-up air system — a rooftop unit that brings outside air in, tempers it to roughly room temperature in winter, and feeds it back into the kitchen so the hood has something to pull on. There are three ways to do it:
A properly sized tempered fresh-air system runs about $15,000–$45,000 installed, depending on hood load and rooftop access. We design the hood and the fresh-air supply as one system, not two separate line items, because they have to balance — and the balancing is what every "value" quote leaves out.
Every grease hood gets a wet-chemical fire-suppression system tied into it. Tank of fire-suppressant agent, heat-sensing links above each appliance, nozzles aimed at every fryer/griddle/burner, a manual pull station near the kitchen exit, and a gas shutoff that interlocks with the system so flame cuts the moment it discharges. The fire inspector tests this on the pre-opening walk. There's no opening without a passing test, and there's no skipping it.
A few practical notes operators rarely hear up front:
For most restaurants over a certain size, the building code wants a one-hour fire-rated wall between the kitchen and the dining room. In practice that means specific drywall, specific door selections at the pass, and fire-rated framing around any cutout. It's not exotic, but it's the kind of detail that gets missed when a residential GC tries to do a restaurant. Our restaurant project experience has examples where we caught this on the framing inspection and corrected before drywall — much cheaper than after.
In 2026 GTA dollars, here's what to expect on a single-hood restaurant:
These ranges include the hood itself, ductwork up to the roof, the rooftop fan, the tempered fresh-air system, the fire-suppression package, and the gas interlock. They don't include rooftop structural reinforcement (sometimes needed for older plaza units), grease trap upsizing, or electrical service upgrades. For where those costs land in the bigger picture, our restaurant build-out cost guide for Toronto in 2026 shows how the ventilation envelope sits inside the full $/sf number for a typical concept.
A grease hood install gets dramatically more expensive if the space wasn't designed for one. Before you sign:
Q: What size hood do I need over a 10-foot wok line in a Toronto Chinese restaurant? A: A 10-foot wok line typically needs a 12-foot grease hood (6 inches of overhang on each side) pulling roughly 5,500–7,000 cubic feet per minute, with a matching tempered fresh-air supply. The exact number gets calculated off the actual burners; our mechanical engineer runs it before quoting.
Q: Do I need a grease hood over a panini press or a high-volume espresso setup? A: Usually no — both are typically covered by a steam (vapor) hood. The exception is if the panini press is running with bacon, sausage, or other grease-producing items continuously; then it crosses into grease-hood territory. The fire inspector and the city's plan reviewer make the call on borderline cases, and it's worth pre-checking before equipment shows up.
Q: How long does a grease hood install take in a Toronto restaurant build-out? A: From hood arriving on site to fire-suppression test passed, plan on 3–5 weeks if rooftop access is straightforward. Add 2–3 weeks if the building needs roof reinforcement or a new rooftop opening, and another 1–2 weeks if the gas service needs an upgrade through the utility and TSSA.
Q: Can I reuse the grease hood the previous tenant left behind? A: Sometimes — and it's worth checking, because a reusable hood can save you $20,000+. We inspect the hood, the ductwork, the rooftop fan, and the fresh-air unit and tell you which pieces survive and which ones come out. Most often the hood and ductwork are reusable; the fan, fresh-air unit, and fire-suppression package usually aren't, because they're sized to a specific equipment list and yours will be different.
Q: What ventilation does a hotpot restaurant need that a regular restaurant doesn't? A: Hotpot pushes a lot of steam into the dining room, not just the kitchen, so you're balancing exhaust and fresh-air supply across two zones instead of one. Most hotpot rooms also need downdraft or table-level extraction at each booth. Numbers and layout patterns are in our hotpot construction guide for the GTA.
Q: Does the fire inspector come before or after Toronto Public Health? A: Both come before opening, usually within a few days of each other. The fire inspector verifies the hood, the suppression system, the gas interlock, and the exits. Toronto Public Health verifies the kitchen layout, the three-compartment sink, the handwash sinks, refrigeration, and food-safety equipment. They're separate walks; we coordinate both so they happen the same week.
Q: My space is in a Mississauga plaza. Are the ventilation rules different from Toronto? A: The provincial rules are the same, but the rooftop work and the plan reviewers are different. Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, Brampton, and Richmond Hill each have their own plan-review queues and their own preferences on how the math gets shown on the drawings. We've worked with all of them — see our restaurant construction GTA service area for how we handle it city by city.
Q: How does the grease hood interact with my grease trap? A: They're separate systems — the hood handles air, the grease trap handles water — but they both come up on the same plumbing inspection. If the trap is undersized for your kitchen, the inspector flags it whether or not the hood is perfect. Our grease trap sizing guide for Ontario restaurants covers how to size both together so neither one becomes the surprise on inspection day.
Q: What permits cover the ventilation work? A: The hood, the ductwork, the rooftop fan, the fresh-air supply, and the fire-suppression package all roll into the building permit and the mechanical drawings stamped by your engineer. Gas connections get TSSA sign-off, electrical gets ESA sign-off, the fire inspector signs off on suppression, and the city's plan reviewer signs off on the drawings. The full sequence is in our restaurant permits guide for Ontario.
Q: Does Buildup design the system in-house? A: We work with mechanical engineers who specialize in commercial kitchen ventilation and bring them in at the quote stage, not after the contract is signed. We submit ventilation calcs with the building permit so reviewers see the math up front, which keeps approvals moving. More on how we coordinate the trades on these jobs is on our project experience page, and we've answered the most common operator questions on our FAQ.
Send us your equipment list and your space — square footage, photos of the existing rooftop and ceiling, and any drawings the landlord gave you. We'll come back with a real ventilation scope, a real number, and a realistic schedule, instead of a placeholder line item. Reach Buildup at 647-477-7999, email info@buildupcontracting.ca, or use the contact form for a ventilation review on a Toronto or GTA space.