A kitchen exhaust, or flue, or range hood, or kitchen hood, as most owners of commercial kitchens are likely familiar, is a key piece of apparatus comprising a mechanical fan. These appliances vent the by-products of cooking: heat, moisture, toxic fumes, grease in the air and steam/smoke.
While a kitchen exhaust is not necessarily required by building codes for all commercial buildings, it can certainly be advantageous in many situations.
Of course, having a kitchen flue alone does not make a kitchen safe and sound. You have to clean your flue as well. In fact, there are dire risks for not cleaning your kitchen exhaust system at least once a month.
Increased Risk of a Fire
Flash fire is one of the most dangerous risks associated with a greasy kitchen exhaust. This kind of event could not only destroy valuable equipment, but could also destroy your whole building and perhaps the adjacent buildings.
Now imagine, if your kitchen were to catch fire, not only the damage that won’t be covered by your insurance, but also the possibility of being sued because others got injured.
Inspection Failure
Dirty kitchen hoods and traps are commonly seen as a health hazard and may cause the inspection to be failed.
In some cases, your health department can close you down based on the nature of the violation(s) even if you are allowed an allotted time to fix the violation(s).
And even if you have time to remediate an issue like a dirty kitchen exhaust, the drop in sales and potential loss of reputation if someone else hears about your failed kitchen inspection could very well destroy your business.
Kitchen Sanitation Issues
A good kitchen exhaust also ensures sanitation, an important factor that can affect the health of your employees and customers. With a dirty kitchen, sanitation problems can pose all kinds of potentially toxic odors, bad air quality, grease or condensation dripping down onto the plate or set of utensils that are ready to be served to the hungry client.
Lower Employee Productivity
Conversely, if your staff is exposed to noxious smells, bad air, and possibly even heat build-up from un-vented cooking fume and kitchen heat, they aren’t going to be perform to their highest capabilities.
Employees can certainly be distracted by unpleasant odors, oppressive and hazardous air to breathe, as well as a kitchen that is too hot to work in.
Because you didn’t ventilate properly you could have a high employee turnover rate, which in turn results in angry customers or you could even get sued if an employee works in a poorly ventilated kitchen and has health effects from it.
Environmental Safety Concerns
Kitchen ventilation is engineered to effectively ventilate environmental toxins such as smoke and grease. As far as the correct cleaning and discarding of grease and any other byproducts that become used in a kitchen exhaust, that falls on you to be compliant with the environmental laws and regulations that apply to you.
A professional kitchen flue cleaner can help you achieve these environmental standards and possibly keep your business from receiving a fine from the environmental protection agency (EPA).
They are certainly not experiences you will wish you have, but thankfully, they are preventable. Ultimately having your commercial kitchen exhaust steam cleaned on a quarterly basis will result in a safer kitchen environment.
Call the experts at Brazas Fire today at 505-889-8999 to schedule your first exhaust cleaning in Albuquerque, NM or throughout New Mexico!