Santa Fe Hood Cleaning
Santa Fe Restaurant hood cleaning is vital to keeping the efficiency of your exhaust system high. I would like to talk about the hoods themselves in this article. The hood is designed to do two things:
- Act as a fire protection device by removing the grease
- Remove smoke and heat from cooking area below
The kitchen exhaust system is designed to pull grease laden smoke up into the hood and to the filters where it is filtered, turned back into grease then emptied into a catch tray. The three basic hood designs are the canopy, the galley and the downdraft. The closer the hood is to the cooking surface, the more efficient it is.
The most common type of hoods seen in restaurants today are canopy style. They are a simple design, do a good job and are easy to maintain. Restaurant hood cleaning is normally a simple task with these hoods. Just make sure that your hood cleaning company is cleaning the entire exhaust system and not the hood only.
Santa Fe Restaurant Hood Cleaning
A good hood cleaner is a god send to all restaurant owners. Not just a hood cleaner, but a good hood cleaner - these are two very different things. A good hood cleaner can walk into your establishment whether it is a sky rise building in Boston or Manhattan or a single level building with 3 feet of duct work and know in the first 25 minutes how the entire job is going to be done. From the point of the first roll of plastic being brought in to the point of each one in the crew exiting your building These men and women represent their company and all hood cleaners reputation.
Today it is a different world out there in this business than it was 20 years ago. Now the regulations are real, they are enforced on both the hood cleaner and the restaurant owner. The NFPA wants the fire hazards gone. They want the problems to be history. This is a good goal but the smaller restaurants took a hit in this whole thing some restaurants have issues with the codes yet the systems are still able to be cleaned properly. So in a circumstance like this, what happens?
But small company who actually cares about you and your system, will tell you about the issues that need to be corrected and probably tell you they can't take the job unless you are going to fix the issue first because the second they put a sticker up they assume responsibility and their license is on the line.
If there was a few changes of wording in the codes a whole world of difference would be made on the industry for the better.
How can a business prosper if they are supposed to regulate the service while staying honest at the same time?
Honest men of integrity suffer greatly in this business.
Hood Cleaning Technician Outlook On The Business
There are plenty of shows on "do-it-yourself" techniques for everything from retiling a bathroom to installing a new kitchen sink.
But when it comes to commercial kitchens, there is no substitute for professional hood, fan and duct cleaning services
The International Kitchen Exhaust Hood Cleaning Association is a Maryland-based trade association dedicated to educating its members about safety and cleaning techniques. The association has established stringent standards and practices for contractors engaged in kitchen exhaust cleaning, conducted a variety of educational programs and worked with influential code setting bodies such as the National Fire Protection Association to improve existing codes and regulations.
Even something that sounds as simple as cleaning a filter is not a job for a novice, as filters capture grease and other debris and when cleaning them, proper disposal of the effluent washed from the filter is an important consideration.
Federal law states that none of that wastewater can be put into a public sewer. But city and state guidelines also must be taken into consideration so the application of that law can vary from state to state for this reason.
Recommended cleaning schedules vary according to the type of equipment, cooking methods and volume of food cooked. However, there are recommendations that restaurant managers and owners can follow to determine how often to have kitchen hoods, ducts and fans professionally cleaned.
Restaurants should be cleaned every six months at a minimum. Restaurants that use deep fat fryers and/or charbroilers should clean these systems every three months at a minimum.
Eating establishments that use smokehouses or wood fires should undergo monthly cleanings at a minimum.
Restaurants that use large amounts of vegetable oils in their cooking processes should go no longer than three months between cleanings. When vegetable oil grease is left to build up, it becomes "glue-like" and removing it is a difficult task.
