BinderHow often does a kitchen fire suppression system need to be inspected?
The system over your cook line, the one with the pull station by the exit and the nozzles aimed at the fryer, is a wet chemical extinguishing system. NFPA 17A governs it, and the number it sets out is six months.
Semiannual, by someone licensed to do it
NFPA 17A calls for the system to be inspected and maintained at six month intervals by trained personnel. In practice that means a licensed contractor, because most states license this work specifically, and the visit produces both a tag on the system and a written report.
Two visits a year is the part people get wrong. Hood cleaning frequency varies with how hard the kitchen is used, which is a separate question with a separate answer, and because the two services are often sold together operators sometimes assume the suppression check happens whenever the hood is cleaned. If your hood is cleaned annually and your suppression system is checked at the same visit, the suppression system is being checked half as often as the standard describes.
The monthly check is yours
Between those visits, the owner is expected to look at the system: that the manual pull station is unobstructed, the nozzle caps are in place and the nozzles are not clogged with grease, nothing has been moved under the hood that changes what the nozzles are aimed at, and the gauge reads correctly. It takes a minute and it catches the thing that actually causes failures, which is a kitchen rearranged around a system that was aimed at the old layout.
Fusible links and the cylinder
The fusible links, the small metal pieces that melt and trigger the system, are replaced on their own schedule rather than only when they look worn. Your contractor handles this as part of a service visit, and the report should say the links were replaced and when.
The cylinder itself is pressure tested at a much longer interval, measured in years from a date stamped on the cylinder. This is the item most likely to surprise a new owner, because the clock started under the previous operator and nothing about the system looks any different the day it comes due.
After the system discharges
If the system ever goes off, for a real fire or by accident, it has to be serviced and recharged before the kitchen cooks again, and that service generates its own report. Keep it. An insurer reviewing a claim will want to see the servicing history around the event, and a gap immediately before a fire is the worst possible gap to have.
What to keep
Both semiannual reports each year, for each location, plus anything from a discharge or repair. If a health or fire inspection produced a correction notice about the system, keep the notice and the document showing it was resolved, because the second one is worthless without the first.
This page describes what published standards say. It is not legal advice and it is not a determination about any premises. The requirements that apply to your building, including how often work must be done and what must be kept, are set by your authority having jurisdiction, which is usually your local fire marshal or health department. Where this page and your inspector disagree, your inspector is right.
Keeping this straight without thinking about it
Binder tracks the suppression system as its own item with its own interval, separate from the hood, so a system checked once a year shows as overdue rather than quietly passing because the hood was cleaned. Reports emailed by your contractor are filed against that system with the date they were performed.
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