By: George Zawacki

Often very little, when they buy duct cleaning services only on price. You may get only what can be seen standing under the exhaust hood.

If you are familiar with the WYSIWYG term, What You See Is What You Get, operators who willingly seek the cheapest duct cleaning service, receive only what they pay for, which is the inside of the hood. If what they see looks clean and they have a dated tag to show for it, they are satisfied.

Remember that a fire needs fuel to burn. It’s what you do not see up inside the ducts that provides the fuel for trouble.

What most operators do not do is inspect behind the filters. They are mostly concerned with the dated tag that stipulates the system has been cleaned. For reasons such as hot equipment and difficult reaches to remove the filters, the tag remains the only assurance that the both the hood and the full duct system has been properly cleaned.

Poorly trained and unscrupulous duct cleaning services rely on the tag as proof they did their work. The owner is not going to look behind the filters and check the work, so why bother. The mantra of many duct cleaning services is “get in and get out”.

Many fire inspectors do not look behind the filters. Again, it may be the wrong time and the equipment is hot and greasy or the kitchen is very busy. It is difficult to stop a chef, cook or grill man who has a 10” knife in his hand and tell him to stop work for ten minutes while his orders pile up at 12 noon.

The only way to be certain that the job has been done well is to remove filters, especially those directly under the duct opening and shine a strong flashlight up into the shaft. If it was properly cleaned, the ducts will be cleaned to bare metal as far as one can see, not just as far as one can reach inside.

The fire protection system nozzles and piping should also be clean. When the fire system nozzles are dirty and caked with grease, the risk that the system will not trigger in the event of fire rises dramatically. A grease caked fire suppression system will lock in the release wire that triggers the main tank of suppression material. Fusible links if coated with grease may not trigger quickly enough to put out a fire.

At that point, all the kitchen staff can do is head for the exits. A fire needs fuel. If the fire system is caked with grease, it is reasonable to anticipate the duct leading to the roof is also dirty. Type K hand held extinguishers are useless when fire gets up into the ductwork.

Inspections on the roof are equally important. Roof inspections by the fire inspector can quickly identify how well a system is being cleaned. Has grease collected on to the roof membrane? Is there a safety chain and hinging in place to tilt the hood back during cleaning? By tilting the fan back, the inspector can shine his flashlight down into the stack and determine how well the system was cleaned. Is the belt serviceable or broken? Have wires been pulled out of the electrical box causing unsafe conditions for anyone attempting to work around these devices?

2004-NFPA-96 now recognizes the need for certified duct cleaning services. The code states that trades are now required to be “Trained, Qualified and Certified (TQC) acceptable to the authority having jurisdiction. Training services are now available that teach and instruct certified to ISO 9001 standards. One such service is Phil Ackland’s Kitchen Exhaust Cleaners Certification Protocol. Contact Phil at 250-494-1361 for complete details.