This restaurant in Orange County, CA had a hood cleaning performed in September of 2022. The company provided a certificate of performance. It stated “This system has been inspected and cleaned to NFPA 96 Standards“. The section in the NFPA 96 Standards that referenced hood cleaning states that “Hoods, grease removal devices, fans, ducts, and other appurtenances shall be cleaned to remove combustible contaminants prior to surfaces becoming heavily contaminated with grease or oily sludge.” However his was not the case for this restaurant as many parts of the kitchen exhaust system were left untouched.
We have come across many hood cleaning companies in Orange County that just do a terrible job. This company was at least cleaning the area behind the filters, up the duct a little and the easy to access parts of the exhaust fan. They did clean down the duct very well. The backs of the fan blades and the lower part of the duct near the hood were neglected. Generally these parts of the exhaust system are harder to clean.
Looking up the duct you can see that the previous Orange County hood cleaning company was missing over half of the duct
The previous hood cleaning company was also not fully cleaning the backs of the fan blades
After our initial inspection and estimate, we were able to get in and clean up the entire system. Using custom hood cleaning tools designed by kitchen exhaust cleaning industry veterans of over 20 years, the hard to reach areas were cleaned.
Following our service, the area leading away from the hood and up to the fan looks pretty good.
This what the duct looks like after a proper hood cleaning
Additionally the backs of the fan blades are clean now. This will prevent the kitchen exhaust fan from going out of balance.
The backs of the fan blades after a proper hood cleaning
