Commercial kitchen hood cleaning: the property manager's checklist

“The hood cleaners came in September and the sticker is on the hood, so we’re compliant.” Property managers who lease space to restaurants say it all the time, and it is the most misleading line in the building. Commercial kitchen hood cleaning is not a once-a-year degreasing. The exhaust system has three owners — grease duct cleaning, fire suppression and ventilation mechanics — and the sticker vouches for only one of them, often only in part.

This checklist is for the landlord or manager who doesn’t cook but whose building burns if grease ignites in a duct. It covers what to check, how often, and above all what to read in the paperwork your contractors leave behind.

Commercial kitchen hood cleaning: who is responsible for what?

Short answer: a commercial hood system needs three separate contractors. A specialized cleaner inspects and degreases the hood, ducts and fan under NFPA 96. A fire protection company services the suppression system every six months. A ventilation contractor maintains the exhaust fan, the make-up air unit and the interlock between them. The property manager is the one who keeps all three on schedule.

In Quebec, municipal fire prevention bylaws build on the National Fire Code, which requires ventilation for commercial cooking equipment to comply with NFPA 96. Quebec City’s bylaw spells it out; in Montréal, the Service de sécurité incendie (SIM) is the inspecting authority. The principle is the same everywhere: the fire department, as authority having jurisdiction, can ask for proof that the system is inspected, cleaned and maintained.

Problems hide in the gaps between those columns: everyone does their part well, and nobody looks at where the parts meet.

How often should a restaurant exhaust hood be inspected and cleaned?

NFPA 96 sets the inspection frequency by type of cooking:

Note the distinction: the standard sets how often to inspect, and cleaning becomes mandatory as soon as an inspection finds grease build-up. Codes that adopt this language give a measurable trigger: about 2 mm of deposit (2,000 µm) measured with a depth gauge on duct surfaces, and 3.2 mm (3,175 µm) inside the fan housing. A diner frying all day reaches those depths well before its six-month appointment.

Tools required

For a property manager, the “toolkit” is mostly paperwork:

• the last full cleaning report, not just the sticker;
• the suppression system service tag and its latest report;
• a plan or sketch of the duct route, from the kitchen ceiling up to the roof;
• a flashlight and roof access to see the fan and the membrane;
• the name of the technician who services the make-up air unit.

⚠ Safety

Never have a filter pulled or an access panel opened while cooking is under way. Any work on the fan or inside the duct starts with lockout/tagout of the equipment: a fan that restarts while a technician has an arm in the housing is a serious injury. Cleaning chemicals must never touch the fusible links or detectors of the suppression system, and flammable solvents are not permitted.

The six-point checklist

1. Classify the kitchen honestly

Has the tenant added a charcoal grill or started opening late? The kitchen may have changed categories. Revisit the frequency whenever the menu or hours change, and record the chosen category in the lease or maintenance file.

2. Read the “inaccessible areas” section of the report

The cleaning report must state which sections were inaccessible or not cleaned. It is the most important line on the page and the least read. A horizontal duct run of several metres with no access panel is a grease reservoir no one can reach. Ask for a plan to open it up: adding listed access doors is a small job next to a duct fire.

3. Check filters and the kitchen routine

Grease filters are the first line of defence. They must be in place, listed for commercial cooking, tight-fitting with no gaps, and cleaned on a written routine by kitchen staff — often weekly, daily for a heavily used fryer. A missing filter, or a furnace filter stuffed in its place, sends grease straight into the duct.

4. Check the suppression tag

The suppression system must be serviced by a qualified person at least every six months, including a test of actuators and detectors; metal-alloy fusible links are replaced at least twice a year. Between visits, staff can do the monthly visual check: gauge in range, seals intact, manual pull station unobstructed.

5. Go up on the roof

On Montréal’s flat roofs, the exhaust fan is the most neglected component. Have someone check the belt and bearings, whether a hinge kit lets the fan tilt open for cleaning, and the grease drain or collector. Grease running onto the membrane degrades it and leaves exposed fuel on the roof. Cold also congeals grease in unheated duct sections: in February, deposits build up faster near the top of the run than at the hood.

6. Test make-up air before winter

A hood exhausting without make-up air puts the kitchen, then the whole ground floor, under negative pressure: doors that stick, drafts, and natural-draft appliances that spill. The full scenario is laid out in our article on negative building pressure. Have the gas-fired make-up air unit’s start-up and its interlock with the hood verified before the first week below freezing.

Saint-Laurent: the certificate that said “inaccessible”

A two-storey commercial building in Saint-Laurent, with a grill counter on the ground floor. The manager called us about a noisy exhaust fan. On the roof, the belt was frayed and the fan housing was coated in thick grease, running toward the membrane through a plugged drain.

The cleaning certificate, four months old, was entirely in order — and noted, in small print, “horizontal section above suspended ceiling: inaccessible.” Roughly six metres of duct had never been degreased since the restaurant opened. The charcoal grill added in the meantime had moved the kitchen from the semi-annual category to the monthly one, and nobody had revised the schedule.

The fix: new belt and bearings, a hinge kit on the fan, then coordination with the cleaner to install access doors in the horizontal run. The ventilation and air quality service contract now includes a roof visit at every cleaning, and degreasing has moved to a monthly schedule.

Next step: pull three documents this week

Ask your tenant or contractor for the last full cleaning report, the suppression system tag and the date of the last make-up air test. If any one of the three is missing, or the report lists an inaccessible area, you know where to start.

A well-maintained hood goes unnoticed; a neglected one eventually gets noticed from blocks away. Montréal Combustion can take over the mechanical side — exhaust fan, make-up air, interlock — and fit it into the other two contractors’ schedules, so the gap between them stops being your building’s blind spot.