Difference Between Hood Cleaning & Restoration Cleaning

Hood Cleaning or Restoration Cleaning?
Which Do You Need?

A traditional hood cleaning and a grease duct restoration service have many differences. The main one being the two processes have different objectives. Hood cleaners quickly clean exhaust hood systems cleaning all accessible areas, while a Grease Duct Restoration service cleans the hidden and "inaccessible" areas of the grease duct to bare metal.

Traditional hood cleaning is a more general approach, while a grease duct restoration service is much more specialized. Think of it like a primary care physician and a cardiologist. A primary care doctor provides general health care, while a cardiologist provides more specialized medical care. In the same way, a primary care physician may refer you to a cardiologist for specialized heart care, a hood cleaner may refer you to a restoration company for a "bare metal" start over service for the areas of grease duct they just cannot get to.

Hood Cleaning

Hood cleaners use pressure washers and strong soaps to rinse grease from kitchen exhaust systems after they become heavily contaminated. Based on their customers' cooking type, the cleanings could be every month or as little as once every six months.

A limitation of hood cleaners is that they can only clean what they can see and reach. Due to the complex design of a lot of exhaust systems, this may only represent a small portion of the grease duct.

To assist hood cleaners, aftermarket manufacturers created UL-listed cleanout panels to make complex systems more accessible. The panels must be strategically placed to allow technicians to get into inaccessible areas of the grease duct. And these panels must be placed along the entire run of the grease duct so that it can be cleaned. To do this work properly, it requires a lot of dangerous and physically difficult work in confined spaces above the hood.

Unfortunately, because of the danger and difficulty involved in confined space work, some hood cleaning companies only clean what their customers can see from their kitchen floors. They make the visible area of the hood above the cookline, and the exhaust fan look good, but they do not remove the fire danger from the grease duct. Sometimes it is because of a lack of experience and training, and other times it is because they do not want to spend the time required to do the complete job.

Regardless of the reason, the flammable buildup in the grease ducts remains and gets compounded every day that it is not removed.

Grease Duct Restoration Service

Safe Dux uses new technologies, cleaning solutions, and rotary cleaning equipment to restore the grease duct system to bare metal. This is now a requirement of NFPA96.

When Safe Dux is contracted to provide complete restoration cleaning, this includes:

Safe Dux also provides recommendations for: