When inspecting your grease exhaust system post cleaning, here are some tricks to make sure the systems have been properly cleaned and are indeed fire safe. The first item is to review the required cleaning report. Look for any language that states the system is non compliant. In particular, look for any additional access requirements focusing on inaccessible areas. Any language with inaccessible areas in the report are KEC speak that the system was not completely cleaned and they take no responsibility for the end result if there is a grease fire. Access plates should be noted and dealt with during the survey of your systems when the KEC vendor quote the work. Never allow exhaust systems to be cleaned without proper access installed first. If you do, it is a complete waste of money. The old term "money for nothing" applies here. Another red flag to look for in the report or conversations with the KEC company is language that claims "they did the best that they could" or that they would "catch up" the cleanings during future services. The translation is easy. They simply did not clean it and are trying to get away with not performing to the MINIMUM REQUIRED STANDARD of removing all of the combustable material (IE: Grease and Carbonized Grease). Very rarely do companies actually catch up with removing old grease. I have never actually seen this myself and concider "Catching up" to be one of the biggest lies in the industry.
Now lets get to what to look for. The main two areas I check first are behind the upper and lower filters rails where many fires start and looking up the stack to verify cleanliness. The smoking gun that you were not properly cleaned is a clear line where the cleanings stopped. It may look like sharp scrape makes or what looks like pressure washer lines. There should be uniform bare metal the day after the job or even a daily even buildup throughout the lower sections after a few weeks with no clean lines with different thicknesses of grease buildup. The exceptions are where the impact zones are at. They will be thick but there will not be clear lines. You can easily view this areas with a digital camera or phone camera. Make sure to move the camera around and it will like to focus on the fire pipes making it difficult to see past the pipes. Next lets use a selfie stick to get the camera past where you can normally see. Using the remote button or setting the timer on the camera, you can easily get pictures of the hidden areas. You also want to look above the hood to check for leakage. Light globes full of water are a good sign of this leakage. We will discus the upper sections of the system in the next post.
Originally published February 15, 2017 on Tales of the Greaser.