The kitchen hood serves more purposes than just directing the exhaust from your cooking equipment. It has an important safety role to play and keeps your staff comfortable when they are in the kitchen. The hood, filters, duct, and fan work together to remove smoke, fumes, grease-bearing vapors. As these components come in touch with these elements, they need regular cleaning to ensure the system keeps working effectively, efficiently, and safely. These surfaces will accumulate grease and grime over time and require timely cleaning. So how often should you clean your commercial kitchen hoods? We at Antiflamme Purafiltre provide you some valuable insights so that you can take the right steps.
How Often Should You Clean
Generally, kitchen hoods should be cleaned once every 3 months. However, there are many factors at play here. Some types of commercial kitchen exhaust systems need cleaning once every month. According to the National Fire Protection Association, you should follow this cleaning schedule:
- Regular restaurants, hotels, and cafeterias should clean kitchen hoods every 3 months
- Fast food and hamburger restaurants, and charcoal-burning and wood-burning kitchen systems must clean their hoods every month. The same applies to 24-hour restaurants.
- Pizza restaurants and oven hoods must clean hoods once every 6 months
If your commercial facility uses the kitchen seasonally, you may need to clean the hood just once a year. For example, some kitchens need to be used just for a month or two in a year. It is rare to have commercial hoods over non-grease equipment, but they will need cleaning once in 12 months. Kitchens that don’t use oil or grease or prepare plant-based foods may require much less cleaning to maintain a clean system.
It is not just the health inspectors and fire marshals that set this frequency schedule, your insurance company will also have specific requirements. We at Antiflamme Purafiltre recommend that the longer hours your commercial kitchen operates and uses smoke and grease to cook, the more often the hoods should be cleaned.
How to Know When to Clean?
Many commercial kitchen managers or owners want to know how they can tell if it is time to clean. Besides the standard times laid down by regulating agencies, you should also be able to read the signs and take appropriate steps for hood cleaning. A clean exhaust system is typically associated with bare metal. When you see a bare metal kitchen exhaust system, it means:
- No residue
- No build-up
- No dirt in the vents
So, if you notice any signs of grease, dirt, or other build-ups, it should be time for a clean-up. So, besides following the schedule mentioned above, you should always try to maintain a bare-metal state on the surfaces.
Importance of Timely Hood Cleaning
Now that you know how often your commercial kitchen hoods should be cleaned, we at Antiflamme Purafiltre would like you to know all the benefits it can offer.
The common benefits of regular and proper cleaning are as follows:
- Maintaining clean surfaces
- Preventing disasters, including fire hazards
- Maintaining the performance and efficiency of your kitchen exhaust system
- Savings on insurance premiums
Proper and timely cleaning also adds years to the lifespan of the system.
Thus, there are many reasons for keeping your commercial hoods clean. It serves a wide range of functional, aesthetic, and safety purposes. We at Antiflamme Purafiltre recommend following the regulations or industry standards for cleaning. Besides addressing safety concerns, it will help you get the most out of the system. Professional cleaning also means regular maintenance, thus keeping your system working at its optimal levels.
