With increased legislation and enforcement of Health and Safety Law, kitchen and kitchen extraction system cleaning is becoming an essential part of industrial and commercial building maintenance across the UK.
A clean kitchen and extract system is extremely important in order to prevent fires as well as the risk of bacterial contamination, spread of diseases, pest infections and faulty/dangerous equipment. Poorly designed and installed or damaged ductwork can leak grease, thus extending the fire risk, hygiene, odour and vermin hazards.
Kitchen extract (exhaust) systems are particularly affected by the deposition of grease and oil on internal surfaces from the canopy, including any ductwork, through to the fan and discharge, since no filter can be 100% effective. These areas, if not professionally maintained, can become a fire risk and can be a major cause of the spread of fire in food production establishments. Under certain circumstances flame, or high temperature within the duct and canopy, can ignite the grease causing fire to spread rapidly through the duct. Flame and heat within the duct can ignite surrounding materials at various points along the ductwork path and transfer fire in ways that are difficult to predict and control by kitchen designers, installers, building owners, kitchen operatives and ultimately fire fighters.
Therefore, it is extremely important that grease extract systems are regularly inspected and cleaned as required, to ensure they do not pose a major potential fire risk at any time.
In addition to this, failure to ensure regular cleaning of kitchen grease extract systems can invalidate buildings insurance cover. Insurers may not always pay a claim if the duct system was found to be the cause of the fire spreading, especially if it could be demonstrated that the system was not properly cleaned in accordance with their policy conditions or warranties. These policies invariably contain conditions and warranties that stipulate a minimum cleaning frequency for grease extract ductwork systems under the insurance contract which can be of a higher frequency of cleaning than TR/19 recommendations.
