My name is Jay Lopez,
and I'm the owner of Cleannex.
Today, I'm gonna be walking you through
how we clean a kitchen exhaust system
in a restaurant.
The purpose of a kitchen exhaust system
is to extract the fumes from a kitchen
in a commercial setting.
In order to remove grease,
you have to understand grease.
What holds the oil together is the fat,
and once the first layer is up,
it becomes a magnet,
and it attracts more and more and more.
Everything is cleaned from top to bottom,
and you would start cleaning the fan first.
We're using a high-end degreaser
with a little added ingredient,
potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide.
Those two chemicals combined create miracles
in destroying the fat and the grease.
In our case, we time it
somewhere between 10 to 15 minutes.
Once we see that the grease starts to melt,
at that point, we know
we need to apply hot water and remove it,
because anything longer at that point
is going to start to destroy the metal.
Once the fan has been cleaned,
the next step would be the duct.
That's the part that connects the fan to the hood.
This level is considered extreme.
That was a fire waiting to happen.
I would say this is about a year worth of grease.
It all depends on the volume of cooking.
If this is moderate cooking,
this is about a year's worth of grease.
That's a lot.
The duct is cleaned in a few different steps.
During this process,
we use a tool made by Guardian.
This tool is known as the EZ Magnetic Duct Scraper.
It has magnets set into the tool
and a razor blade on each side.
Once it's clenched to the duct,
it is manually moved forward and backwards
until the grease is removed.
This forward-and-backward method
assures that the grease buildup
will be removed from both sides.
It will go from the yellow color
all the way into the black.
When it's in the black level,
that's an extreme level.
That means that the system
has not been properly maintained.
In these types of designs,
we'll use duct spinners and duct brushes.
Duct spinner is designed to self-rotate
within a protective cage
and spray water at high speed,
which dislodges buildup from the metal duct.
We use a combination
of a foaming agent and a degreaser.
The foam is used as a delivering agent,
and that allows the degreaser to stay in contact
with the grease for a longer period.
If foam was not used,
the degreaser would drip off the grease.
The next step would be the hood and the filters.
See, the filters are your first line of defense.
What the filters is doing is holding back heat
and is holding back most of that grease.
When the filters no longer can hold the grease
and once that grease starts getting heat and melting,
you have the potential of that grease
dropping into your food.
And at that point, it's a health issue.
I've seen restaurants been shut down
by the health department
for not cleaning their hood.
I've seen restaurants been shut down
by the fire marshal
for not maintaining their hoods.
We take precaution
in protecting the area from contamination.
We use two layers of plastic sheeting
in order to protect the appliances
from coming in contact with any chemical.
The second layer of plastic sheeting
is wrapped around the hood,
and then a funnel is created.
The funnel is used to drain the chemical grease
and water into the plastic containers.
The plastic sheeting also serves
as a protective barrier
in preventing the chemical from
coming in contact with the food-preparation area.
Once we're completed
and the plastic sheeting is removed,
we'll conduct a freshwater wipe down
and recommend to the client that they do the same
prior to preparing any food.
According to NFPA 96,
which is the agency that regulates this industry,
the frequency of cleanings
depends on the style of cooking you're conducting
and the frequency of cooking.
For example, if you cook with solid fuel,
solid fuel is basically cooking with charcoal.
Those are 30-day mandatory cleanings,
because they produce a lot more grease,
and the embers that come from the solid fuel
can ignite the grease.
If you're an occasional cooking facility,
those would be a year.