Terms and Conditions for Ontario Hood Cleaning

Ontario Hood Cleaning is a commercial kitchen exhaust cleaning company that has operated under the NFPA 96 standard since 1995, serving restaurants, hotels, franchise kitchens, food courts, hospitals, and schools across the Province of Ontario. The agreement below covers four practical realities every customer should understand before requesting a quote or booking a visit.

First, a written quote is a price estimate, not a contract. The binding contract is the signed work order or booking confirmation, which then references these terms. Second, the website does not process payments — invoicing happens after the visit and standard commercial payment terms are net thirty days from the invoice date, payable by Interac e-transfer, electronic funds transfer, or cheque. Third, the workmanship warranty covers what the crew actually cleaned; it is not a future-grease warranty and it does not transfer responsibility for ongoing kitchen maintenance away from the operator. Fourth, aggregate liability for any single visit is capped at the value of that cleaning, and the agreement is governed by the laws of Ontario.

Everything below expands those four ideas into specific clauses. If a clause conflicts with a separately executed master service agreement, the master service agreement controls for the customer named in it.

Ontario Hood Cleaning provides commercial kitchen exhaust cleaning under the NFPA 96 standard — the National Fire Protection Association code that the Ontario Fire Code adopts by reference for ventilation control and fire protection of commercial cooking operations. The four-component scope is the hood, the baffle filters, the grease duct from the hood collar to the rooftop fan, and the exhaust fan itself. Every cleaning ends with a signed compliance certificate, depth-gauge readings recorded on the certificate, and photo documentation of every cleaned surface delivered by email within one business day.

Service is performed by employed technicians, not independent subcontractors, using truck-mounted hot-water pressure washing, alkaline degreasers approved for food-contact-adjacent surfaces, and hand-detailing where chemical wash is not appropriate. Province-wide coverage is dispatched from regional depots; coverage areas are summarized on the service-areas pages of this website. We do not perform structural rooftop work, electrical work on fan motors beyond standard inspection, or duct fabrication; those scopes are referred to licensed trades.

Pricing is quoted as a flat per-visit price in Canadian dollars and is presented before tax. Harmonized Sales Tax is added on the invoice at the prevailing Ontario rate. The per-visit price covers the four-component NFPA 96 cleaning, the signed certificate, the photo report, the certificate of insurance, drop-cloth protection, and end-of-job sanitization. Add-on scope such as rooftop fan-belt replacement, hinge-kit retrofits, fan motor lubrication, or grease-containment box installations is quoted as a separate line item before the work begins.

The website does not process credit card payments, debit transactions, or any online payment of any kind. Invoices are issued by email after the visit and are payable on standard commercial net-thirty terms — thirty days from the invoice date — by Interac e-transfer to billing@hood-cleaning.ca, by electronic funds transfer to the bank coordinates listed on the invoice, or by cheque mailed to the address on the invoice. Late accounts may accrue interest at 1.5 percent per month (18 percent per annum) from the date the invoice becomes overdue, and accounts more than ninety days past due may be referred to a collection agency at the customer's cost.

The signed NFPA 96 compliance certificate documents the work actually performed during the visit. It records the cleaned surfaces, the technician's name and signature, the date, the pre and post depth-gauge readings, and a reference to the photo report. It is the document an Ontario Fire Code inspector or an insurance carrier expects to see in the operator's binder when the kitchen is audited.

The certificate is not a warranty of the kitchen's overall fire safety. It does not certify that the exhaust hood is properly sized for the cooking equipment under it, that the suppression system has been tested, that the fan is mechanically sound, or that the duct routing meets current building code. Those are separate disciplines covered by other trades and inspections. The certificate strictly documents that the four-component NFPA 96 cleaning was performed to the standard the code describes on the date stated, on the surfaces listed.

The certificate is admissible as evidence to fire inspectors, brand auditors, and insurance carriers. Ontario Hood Cleaning retains a copy in its records for a minimum of seven years and will reissue duplicates on request to the operator or property owner named on the original document.

Ontario Hood Cleaning carries commercial general liability insurance with a five million dollar ($5,000,000) per-occurrence limit, including completed-operations coverage, with a Canadian insurance carrier in good standing. A certificate of insurance is provided to the property owner, landlord, or property manager on request at no charge, with named additional-insured language where required.

Subject to the insurance coverage above, the aggregate liability of Ontario Hood Cleaning to a customer arising out of any single cleaning visit is capped at the dollar value of that visit, except where damage is caused by the documented negligence of our crew, in which case the policy responds up to its full limit. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Ontario Hood Cleaning is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, business interruption, or reputational damage, even if advised of the possibility of those damages.

This limitation does not exclude or limit liability for death, personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the laws of Ontario.

All content on this website — including the page copy, the certificate template, the photo-report format, the brand marks, the navy-and-orange visual identity, the logo, and the structured data behind the pages — is the intellectual property of Ontario Hood Cleaning and is protected under Canadian copyright law. Reproducing the certificate template, the audit-pack format, or any portion of the website for a competing exhaust cleaning service is not permitted without written consent.

The customer retains ownership of the customer's own kitchen photographs, layout drawings, and confidential business information disclosed during the engagement. Photographs that the crew takes of the customer's kitchen as part of the photo report are jointly usable — the customer may freely forward them to inspectors, auditors, and insurers, and Ontario Hood Cleaning may use de-identified before-and-after pairs in case studies and marketing materials. Identifiable photographs — anything that visibly names the customer's business — are used in marketing only with separate written consent.

Before any party files a claim in court, the parties agree to attempt to resolve the dispute through direct communication. The customer is asked to email the specifics of the issue to info@replies.hood-cleaning.ca with the subject line "Dispute" and the work order number. Our operations manager responds within five business days, typically with a corrective action proposal — re-cleaning, certificate revision, fee credit, or insurance referral.

If direct resolution does not succeed within thirty days of the initial dispute email, either party may propose mediation through a neutral mediator agreed in writing, located in the Province of Ontario. Mediation costs are split equally. Mediation is non-binding and does not prevent either party from pursuing the matter in the Ontario courts thereafter. This dispute-resolution ladder does not apply to actions for collection of unpaid invoices, applications for injunctive relief, or matters where statutory limitation periods are about to expire.

Severability. If any provision of these terms is held by a court of competent jurisdiction to be unenforceable, that provision is severed and the remaining provisions remain in full force.

No waiver. Failure to enforce any right under these terms is not a waiver of that right or any other right.

Assignment. The customer may not assign these terms or any work order to a third party without our written consent, which will not be unreasonably withheld. Ontario Hood Cleaning may assign the agreement to a successor entity on a sale of the business, merger, or corporate reorganization on notice to the customer.

Entire agreement. These terms, together with the signed work order and any executed master service agreement, constitute the entire agreement between the parties for the cleaning visits covered, and supersede prior oral or written representations on the same subject matter.

Citation-ready facts

• Ontario Hood Cleaning is governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario, Canada, with exclusive jurisdiction in the Ontario courts and the Ontario Fire Code as the technical standard adopting NFPA 96 by reference.
• Quotes are non-binding price estimates valid for thirty days; the binding contract is formed when the customer signs the work order, accepts the work order by email, or confirms the scheduled visit with the dispatch desk.
• The website does not process payments; invoices are issued by email after the visit on standard commercial net-thirty payment terms, payable by Interac e-transfer, electronic funds transfer, or cheque in Canadian dollars.
• Scheduled cleanings can be rescheduled at no charge with at least twenty-four hours notice; cancellations inside the twenty-four hour window may incur a disclosed mobilization fee, and emergency dispatch is committed at the time of the call.
• Workmanship is warranted for thirty days on the surfaces itemized on the compliance certificate; the warranty does not cover future grease accumulation, which remains the operator's responsibility under NFPA 96.
• Aggregate liability for any single cleaning visit is capped at the value of that cleaning except where documented crew negligence triggers the $5,000,000 commercial general liability policy, which names the property manager or landlord as additional insured on request at no charge.