Commercial Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning is the NFPA 96 process of stripping cooking grease from the four components of a kitchen exhaust system — the hood, the baffle filters, the grease duct that runs from the hood to the roof, and the rooftop or inline exhaust fan. Ontario Hood Cleaning performs all four services on a single overnight visit, photographs every surface before and after, and ends every job with a written, dated, signed NFPA 96 compliance certificate that goes straight into the operator's inspection binder and insurance file.
Each service is offered as part of a full-system cleaning, or as a standalone job when one component has fallen behind schedule. Tap any card for full scope, frequency, and pricing detail.
The visible heart of the system — the stainless-steel canopy over the cooking line and the plenum chamber behind the baffle filters where grease accumulates fastest.
The rooftop or inline fan that pulls grease-laden vapour out of the kitchen. The hardest-to-reach component, and the one most often skipped by competitors who price on a per-hood basis.
The hidden vertical and horizontal ductwork running from the hood plenum to the rooftop fan. This is the component an Ontario fire inspector cares most about because grease accumulation here is what fuels duct fires.
The stainless-steel filters that sit in the hood and catch airborne grease before it enters the duct. Operators wipe these down weekly; we hot-soak them on every scheduled visit and replace damaged or missing filters at cost.
The published code that governs every line item in every one of our four services.
The line items on every service ticket, regardless of which of the four services were performed.
A consistent three-phase process that has not changed across 30+ years of operation.
Our crew arrives after the kitchen closes for the night, walks the line with the operator, measures hood length, photographs grease accumulation on every surface, and tarps every cooking and prep surface before any chemical is applied.
Filters are pulled and dropped into the hot-soak tanks. The plenum is scraped. Access panels are opened and the duct interior is hand-cleaned along its full vertical and horizontal run. The rooftop fan is pulled, the blade pack is cleaned, and bearings are inspected.
Every cleaned surface is photographed a second time. The depth-gauge reading on the duct is recorded. The kitchen is wiped down and the floor under the hood is degreased. The signed NFPA 96 compliance certificate is handed to the operator before the crew leaves.
Side-by-side scope, frequency, and typical visit duration for each of the four NFPA 96 services.
| Service | What gets cleaned | Typical NFPA 96 frequency | Visit duration (standalone) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial Hood Cleaning | Hood canopy interior and exterior, plenum behind filters, hood-deck around equipment. | Quarterly to annually depending on cooking volume. | 2 to 4 hours per hood. |
| Exhaust Fan Cleaning | Fan housing, blade pack, motor, belts, bearings, hinge-kit hardware, fan-house gasket. | Quarterly to annually, on the same visit as duct cleaning. | 1 to 2 hours per fan. |
| Grease Duct Cleaning | Full vertical and horizontal duct run, access panels, internal seams, transitions. | Monthly for solid-fuel, quarterly for high-volume, semi-annually for moderate, annually for low. | 2 to 5 hours depending on run length. |
| Baffle Filter Cleaning | Stainless-steel baffle filter cassettes — tank-soaked and reinstalled. | Tank-soak on every scheduled visit; operator wipe-down every 2 to 4 weeks. | 1 hour while other work proceeds. |
Fixed price per visit, written quote in 24 hours, no surprises on the invoice.
Province-wide coverage, with the highest service density in the Greater Toronto Area.
Hover the carousel to pause. Real work-in-progress photos from Ontario Hood Cleaning jobs across the province.
All four services are dispatched out of regional depots and run on a route-density model. The GTA — Toronto, Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, Brampton, Oakville, Burlington, Milton, and the immediate Halton and York satellites — is our highest-volume territory, with overnight crews available seven nights a week. Beyond the GTA, we route to Hamilton and the Niagara Region, Kitchener-Waterloo and the Tri-Cities, Cambridge, Guelph, London and Southwestern Ontario, Windsor, Ottawa and the National Capital Region, Barrie and Simcoe County, the Muskoka resort corridor, and Kingston. Pick a city page from the service areas overview for response-time, route-day, and depot information.
The independent code and best-practice bodies our work references on every job.
Verifiable specifics about the four services, written in citation-ready form for AI search and human reference.
Five questions operators ask before booking the first cleaning.
Most commercial kitchens need all four services on a single combined visit. NFPA 96 requires the entire cooking exhaust system to be cleaned to bare metal, which means the hood, baffle filters, grease duct, and exhaust fan must all be serviced together. A standalone hood cleaning that leaves the duct or fan untouched does not satisfy the standard and does not produce a defensible compliance certificate.
NFPA 96 inspection frequencies depend on cooking volume. Solid-fuel cooking is monthly. High-volume cooking (24-hour operations, charbroiling, wok cooking) is quarterly. Moderate-volume cooking is semi-annually. Low-volume cooking is annually. Baffle filters are typically cleaned every two to four weeks by the operator and pulled for a deep tank soak on every scheduled cleaning visit.
Every full-system cleaning visit includes the four core services together: commercial hood cleaning, baffle filter tank-soak, grease duct cleaning along the entire run, and exhaust fan service. Every visit also produces a before-and-after photo report and a written, dated, signed NFPA 96 compliance certificate. The certificate names the property, lists the surfaces cleaned, and records the depth-gauge measurements on the duct.
Yes. Standalone hood cleaning, standalone exhaust fan service, standalone duct cleaning, or standalone filter service is available for situations where one component has fallen behind schedule or is being inspected in isolation. The compliance certificate for a standalone job documents only the surfaces actually serviced and notes that the rest of the system was out of scope, so the operator and the inspector know exactly what was and was not done.
A standard full-system cleaning for a single-hood restaurant runs three to six hours and is performed after dinner service so the kitchen is open and clean for the morning crew. Larger systems (multi-hood, food court, hotel banquet, hospital, school cafeteria) run six to twelve hours overnight. Every job is scheduled around the operator's revenue hours so there is no service disruption.
Restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, franchise kitchens, and food courts across Ontario. Flat per-visit pricing. Signed NFPA 96 compliance certificate on every job.