Hood Cleaning in Las Vegas

My husband and I have a hood cleaning business in Shreveport, Louisiana.  For the most part, we have the majority of our business from restaurants, churches, senior living facilities and schools.  We decided we wanted to expand our business to include hotels.  We asked our friends who own a hood cleaning business if we could come out and visit them and follow them around for a few days to learn how to better clean commercial kitchen exhaust systems especially in large hotels.

So, we packed our bags and hopped on a plane headed to Las Vegas.  We chose to stay at Caesar’s Palace.  When we were making reservations on the internet, we were able to get a twenty-five percent discount on our stay, so our room was only ninety-nine dollars per night.  When we arrived, we were so impressed with the place because it was spacious and beautifully decorated.

The next morning, we headed over to our friends hood cleaning business to get an education on how they did hood cleaning.  They did not hesitate to send us out with one of their teams to clean a hood at a large casino.  They had to clean a hood in one of their restaurants.  They told us most casinos do not have restaurants below their towers, so they usually vent out on the roof of the building where the main casino is.

For those of you who do not know what hood cleaning is, I’ll give you an education.  Hood cleaning is important as it removes the grease and grime that builds up in the commercial kitchen exhaust system.  First, we seal off the hood with plastic sheets and direct them into large garbage cans.  This is important as we don’t want the run-off landing on the equipment.  We then remove the filters and take them out back and hose them down with an environmentally friendly grease remover.  They will need to sit so we go back inside and hose down the exhaust system with the same cleaner.  We then use a pressure washer to rinse off the chemicals and the grease comes right off.

We do the same for the filters.  One of our technicians will go up on the roof and open the turbine.  They will do the same process of grease removal and make sure there is no grease accumulation on the roof top.  We take before and after pictures to show the owner/manager of the commercial kitchen what we accomplished.  Once the filters are cleaned, we reinstall them then we polish the hood to give it that “like new” appearance.

It is important for any commercial kitchen to have their hoods cleaned professionally.  Relying on employees to do the job is not wise as they have not been trained to the National Fire Protection Association Code 96 regulations.  They may miss important areas where the grease accumulation could cause a fire hazard.  It only takes one spark and the system could catch on fire causing major damage to not only the kitchen but the whole building.

As for the frequency a commercial kitchen exhaust system should have a professional hood cleaning, the National Fire Protection Association recommends the following:

• Once a month if the kitchen uses hard wood, woks or is open twenty-four hours.  We find that even places that cook a lot of burgers should have their hoods professionally cleaned once a month as well.
• Every three months if the kitchen does a high volume of cooking like places that are open twenty-four hours.
• Every six months for a place that does average volume like pizza restaurants.
• Once a year for hoods that are used infrequently or are not over grease appliances.  A good example of that would be a church or a day use camp.

They pulled out a thing that is called a scraper that is magnetic and can get the grease off the sides of the hoods exhaust.  They said if the exhaust system is too long, they also have a robot that they lower down the turbine.

When we were done with that job, we were famished so we decided to have lunch at the Mandalay Bay.  They have this Shark Reef Aquarium that have over two thousand animals including green sea turtle, a Komodo dragon, piranha and giant ray.  They’re Bay of Events can hold up to twelve thousand people for sports and events.

That evening we decided to explore The Strip where there are an amazing number of hotels and casinos.  In addition to shuttles they have a monorail that is free and stops at almost every place.  We got to see Treasure Island, Bellagio Hotel and Casino, The Venetian Las Vegas, MGM Grand the Luxor Hotel and Casino and more.  What an amazing place to see.

After spending three days with our friends learning about their hood cleaning company we really felt we got a good education on how to improve they way we were cleaning hoods.  The first thing we will do when we get home is to purchase a scraper that will help us to our work more efficiently and faster.