How Often Should a Restaurant Hood Be Cleaned in Atlanta?

"How often do we need this done?" is the first question most kitchen managers ask us. The honest answer is that it depends on how you cook. The fire code ties your hood and exhaust cleaning schedule to your cooking volume and your fuel, not to a calendar someone picked years ago.

What NFPA 96 says

NFPA 96 is the national standard for ventilation control and fire protection of commercial cooking operations, and it is the standard fire officials and insurance carriers commonly point to for kitchen exhaust systems. It says the exhaust system has to be inspected for grease buildup by a trained, qualified person on a set schedule, and cleaned when buildup is found. The schedule is based on the type of cooking:

Source: NFPA 96, Schedule of Inspection for Grease Buildup (Table 12.4 in recent editions). Your local authority having jurisdiction decides which edition applies.

Where most Atlanta kitchens land

• Wings, burgers, fried chicken and anything on a charbroiler: usually quarterly. Fryers and grills run hard and push a lot of grease into the exhaust.
• Late night and 24 hour kitchens, hotel kitchens with room service: quarterly, because the hood rarely gets a break.
• Wood fired pizza and barbecue smokers: monthly. Solid fuel builds up fast.
• Cafes, schools and offices with light cooking: often twice a year.

Your local fire marshal or insurance carrier can ask for more. If you are not sure, start with how much your fryers and grills run each week.

The whole system counts, not just the filters

Clean filters are a good start, but NFPA 96 covers the full exhaust path: the hood, the plenum behind the filters, the ductwork and the rooftop fan. Grease that is out of sight still burns. A proper cleaning removes the grease from every reachable surface, and you get a service record and a sticker on the hood that shows the date and who did the work.

Signs you are overdue

• Grease dripping from the hood edges or filters
• A sticky film on the hood that comes back quickly
• Smoke lingering in the kitchen during service
• Grease pooling around the rooftop fan
• No one can find the last service report

Set it once and stop thinking about it

The easiest way to stay on schedule is a recurring service plan. We set your interval by your cooking volume, put the next visit on the calendar, and work after hours so you never miss a service. Every visit comes with a service report for your records. See our hood cleaning service in Atlanta, and if your fire suppression system is due too, our fire suppression service.

One team for the whole kitchen

TruShine handles hood and exhaust cleaning, fire suppression, grease traps, used cooking oil, drain jetting and deep cleaning on one schedule. Learn more about our hood cleaning service.

Frequently Asked Questions