Cook enough fried foods in hot oil on a home kitchen stove, and you’ll experience it . . . that greasy, dust laden buildup on the kitchen backsplash and on the hood above the stove.
Let it build up enough and you’ve got a mess on your hands to clean.
Grease on an industrial scale
Scraping to remove accumulated grease.
What about in an industrial kitchen? The same thing happens . . . only on a much larger scale. Vaporized grease buildup from cooking solidifies inside and outside the hood and exhaust system and over time, can create a substantial fire hazard.
Routine inspection, maintenance, and cleaning of commercial and industrial cooking equipment just makes sense. Hoods need to be inspected for grease buildup. And when that inspection finds accumulated grease buildup in the hood and exhaust system, it needs industrial cleaning.
Industrial bakeries, especially those that produce fried cakes, produce a lot of oily steam that is evacuated by the overhanging hood, large diameter ductwork, and roof mounted exhaust fans.
The oily sludge accumulates in the ductwork, fan blades, housing, and exhaust stack. Not only is it a fire hazard but it reduces airflow by clogging the ductwork, unbalances the fan blades and can cause early failure of fan bearings and motor (which can also lead to fire).
A messy job
As you can imagine, cleaning oily and greasy sludge buildups from industrial fryer hoods and exhaust systems is a messy job. The industrial cleaning job begins by covering everything underneath the exhaust system with protective plastic sheeting. This is especially important to prevent contamination of the fryer itself.
Labor intensive industrial cleaning
Rooftop cleaning of fan housing.
Initial industrial cleaning consists of labor-intensive cleaning using scrapers to remove the heaviest buildup of grease from the exhaust system prior to hot water cleaning.
High-pressure wash
The entire exhaust system, from the hood above the fryer to the fan housing on the roof, is then high-pressure washed from top to bottom including using rotary duct cleaning attachments in the ductwork. This high-pressure hot water removes any remaining grease, dirt, oil, and other contaminants that have collected.
Collection of wastewater
The wastewater, funneled to and collected at ground level, is transferred to the kitchen’s existing wastewater system and containerized for proper disposal or treatment. The solid waste collected is separately containerized for proper disposal. Once the industrial cleaning process is complete, the entire exhaust system is hand wiped, toweled dry, and decontaminated.
Industrial cleaning has always been a messy job for us. Cleaning grease on an industrial scale is even messier.
But that’s what we do.
