A kitchen exhaust, flue, range hood, or kitchen hood, as many commercial kitchen owners are aware, is an important piece of equipment that incorporates a mechanical fan. As a consequence of cooking, these machines remove heat, moisture, hazardous gases, airborne grease, steam, and smoke. Although kitchen exhaust is not required by construction rules in all business properties, having one is obviously useful in many circumstances.
However, simply having a kitchen flue is insufficient to make your kitchen safe. It is also necessary to clean your flue. In reality, failure to clean your exhaust on a regular basis has a number of serious concerns.
The chance of a flash fire is one of the most serious dangers that a greasy kitchen exhaust may offer to your kitchen. Such an occurrence has the potential to harm not just your valuable equipment, but also your whole building and maybe other surrounding structures. Imagine not just the price of damages that your insurer may not cover, but also the danger of a lawsuit if others are wounded if your kitchen catches fire.
Kitchen hoods and traps that are filthy are frequently seen as a health hazard and might result in inspection failure. While you may be granted a certain amount of time to correct the violation(s), depending on the severity of the offense, your health department has the right to shut down your business (s). Even if you are granted time to repair a problem such as a dirty kitchen exhaust, the loss of sales and even reputation if others learn of your kitchen inspection failure might be enough to ruin your firm.
When it comes to sanitation, proper ventilation offered by a kitchen exhaust is critical since it may affect the health of your personnel and consumers. Sanitation difficulties might arise as a result of a dirty kitchen exhaust, including possibly poisonous odors, poor air quality, and undesired grease or condensation pouring onto prepared food, plates, and utensils prior to serving hungry guests.
Your employees’ productivity may suffer as a result of harmful odors, poor air quality, and even heat accumulation from inadequately vented kitchen emissions and heat. Uncomfortable odors, stuffy, dangerous breathing air, and an uncomfortable kitchen temperature can all lead employees to get distracted and perhaps create short- or long-term health risks.
You may face not just a high staff turnover rate and, as a result, irate customers as a result of poor ventilation, but also potential litigation if an employee suffers health effects as a result of working in a poorly ventilated kitchen.
Kitchen ventilation systems are intended to effectively evacuate smoke and grease that are harmful to the environment. However, it is your obligation to follow any environmental standards and legislation that apply to you when it comes to the correct cleaning and disposal of grease and other wastes collected by a kitchen exhaust. A professional kitchen flue cleaner can guarantee that these environmental requirements are satisfied, perhaps avoiding a fine from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The latter are obviously not something you want to go through, but they are, thankfully, avoidable. You may benefit from a safer cooking environment by having your industrial kitchen exhaust steam cleaned on a quarterly basis. To schedule your first exhaust cleaning call 800-700-FLUE now!