Fantech played an instrumental role in clearing the air for Channel 10’s hit show MasterChef.

The program gave 20 budding chefs with no professional experience the opportunity to develop their cooking skills and become Australia’s first MasterChef.

But having 20 contestants cooking in a single room could create a lot of smoke and odour that would affect both the filming quality and comfort of the contestants and crew. To find a solution for this problem the producers, Fremantle Media, approached Active Air Rentals.

After inspecting the MasterChef Australia set, Active Air Rentals consulted with Peter Hanna from Fantech NSW branch to determine what fans would best suit the application.

Active Air Rentals National Sales Manager, Brad Sweeny, said ventilating a film set had a few unique criteria. “Firstly, any ventilation option must be temporary as the set will be used for other shows once filming of MasterChef concludes. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, noise levels need to be low as the fans must operate while filming.”

Three 630 mm diameter, adjustable pitch axial fans were installed on the roof. Semi-rigid flexible ducting from each fan entered the set through existing windows that had been removed.

 Brad said the fans had a rating of only 66dB(A) at 3m and to the relief of the producers, when the fans were operating no noise could be picked up by the microphones while filming.

 “The feedback from Fremantle Media was excellent. The fans were able to remove the fumes and odour from the space quickly and quietly,” Brad said.