Another inaccessible duct tale!

Well, here we are at a new year. I just received the following e-mail from a cleaning company. I don't think he gets it completely. I have posted my reply. He is actually a good company who is trying. That is why he asked for our help. Our regional manager stopped by after he was worried about a system that he could not figure out how to properly access and requested our assistance. He deemed this inaccessible as he did not have enough access to clean it properly. When we took pictures of the hidden areas of the horizontal, we found he was right and it was in pretty bad shape in the those hidden areas. What we also found was that it is pretty easy to make this system accessible. He should not have cleaned it without installing proper access or having it installed by the customer. That should be part of any job specification or exhaust cleaning contract. PERIOD! NO EXCEPTIONS! There is too much at stake from grease fires in these areas. That is exactly what KILLED the two Boston Firefighters last year. Here is the e-mail train with names omitted of course to protect the guilty(or only partially guilty in this case and this contractor cares and is doing something about it).

"HAPPY NEW YEAR

Well, ****** helped prove you wrong. After inspectin the duct at ******** yesterday he proclaimed it to be INACCESSIBLE.

When you say there is no such thing as "inaccessible duct". may I make a friendly recommendation: Change that to "There is no such thing as a duct that cannot be made to be accessible" In any case I really do appreciate the time you gave me in helping prove something to this customer. He may not act on this immediately but he will go to work on getting the necessary work approval for corraction. Thanks again.

*********** ************

********** ************"

Any my reply:

"Hi *******,

You are correct in a way, but I do have to slightly agree with you re-wording. I still think doing jobs without proper access is a cop out for cleaning companies not to do their jobs and that a certified company should not have any customers with inaccessible areas. On this job, ******** said you just need to install proper ceiling and duct access to make it accessible. You should have accepted this job only after installing proper access. ******* states there is no reason that this job has not been done correctly and the proper access has not been installed. We would have automatically installed proper access if we had been contracted to do this job. I think you have a misconception on what I am talking about. Just because a company has not installed proper access does NOT make it inaccessible. Again, in my opinion, it is a certified company's responsibility to make sure proper access is available or installed when they contract a job.

Don"

Questions About Your Exhaust System?