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Flue Steam’s services can help protect against the #1 cause of commercial kitchen fires.

Restaurants are full of potential fire hazards, including both items that could spark a fire and items that could fuel it. For example, a fire could be sparked by an open flame, a faulty electrical connection, or hot cooking equipment. That fire could then feed on any number of fuel sources such as cooking oils, grease buildup, cleaning chemicals, and paper products.

However, one commercial kitchen fire hazard does stand head and shoulders above the rest in terms of its danger, as shown by the following list of the top 5 causes of restaurant fires according to the National Fire Protection Association:

1. Cooking Equipment—responsible for 57 percent of restaurant fires
2. Heating Equipment—responsible for 10 percent of restaurant fires
3. Electrical Distribution & Lighting Equipment—responsible for 7 percent of restaurant fires
4. Smoking—responsible for 7 percent of restaurant fires
5. Arson—responsible for 5 percent of restaurant fires

The fact that one single hazard outstrips all others in causing the majority of restaurant fires is actually helpful to restaurant owners in a certain sense. It provides the ability to focus fire prevention efforts in one single area and see a big impact from those efforts.

Flue Steam Helps You Tackle the Top Cause of Restaurant Fires

At Flue Steam, we offer a variety of essential services that can greatly reduce the risk of cooking equipment causing a fire in your commercial kitchen, and help reduce the amount of damage done by any fires that do manage to break out.

Exhaust Hood Scraping: The exhaust hoods over your cooking equipment can get hot! In some cases, they may get so hot that any grease that has accumulated on them could be in danger of igniting into a flash fire. You can reduce the risk of this possibility by hiring Flue Steam to provide routine exhaust hood scraping services.

Exhaust Duct Steam Cleaning: Vaporized grease can also make its way past your exhaust hood and accumulate on the walls of your ductwork, though at a much slower rate. If flames every reach this fuel source, fire could spread throughout the building very quickly. Flue Steam offers thorough steam cleaning services to help prevent such a scenario.

Automatic Fire Suppression Systems: All commercial kitchens are required to have equipment in place that can automatically extinguish flames that break out on the cooktop or in the exhaust hood and prevent the fire from entering the ductwork. Flue Steam can install and service this equipment for you.

Portable Fire Extinguishers: As a backup to your automatic fire suppression system, you should always have Class K portable fire extinguishers on hand for staff to use in putting out fires that may start anywhere in the kitchen. Flue Steam sells and services this type of fire prevention equipment too.

Whether or not a surface is covered by fire codes, you need to get that grease off of it!

If you own or operate a commercial kitchen—especially one that prepares a lot of fried foods—you are no doubt familiar with the challenges and dangers posed by grease buildup. Hopefully you are keeping up with your grease removal and cleanup activities in a way that will not only protect your property from fire damage and your employees from danger, but also protect your business from being cited for fire code violations.

Flue Steam can handle most—but not all—of your grease removal needs. As a general rule of thumb, just remember that if the activity is required by your local fire codes, we can handle it.

Here are the most important items to keep grease-free.

Grease Filters: Grease filters are designed to catch vaporized grease and remove it from the air before it has a chance to reach your ductwork. As your exhaust system’s first line of defense against grease, naturally they can get very dirty very quickly. The most convenient way to ensure you always have clean grease filters is to sign up for our grease filter exchange service.

Exhaust Hoods: Exhaust hoods can also get greasy fast, especially if they are above a deep fryer or other piece of cooking equipment that generates a lot of vaporized grease. Flue Steam provides hand scraping services to help keep grease buildup on your exhaust hoods to a safe level and reduce your fire risk.

Exhaust Ducts: Grease accumulates more slowly in your ductwork than on your exhaust hood, but it can be much more dangerous. If a fire ignites inside the ducts, it could easily spread throughout the building. Flue Steam can keep every nook and cranny of your ducts clean with our steam cleaning service.

Exhaust Fans: Depending on how long your exhaust ducts are, a goodly amount of grease may accumulate on your exhaust fan. This can pose serious problems because it may slow down the fan, which will affect airflow, comfort, and safety in the kitchen. A greasy fan may also experience accelerated wear and tear and break down faster. Flue Steam can help protect against fan problems by cleaning your fan every time we do a steam cleaning.

Cooking Equipment: Grease splattered around hot cooking surfaces has the potential to ignite. It’s these sorts of small flames that can flare up and spread to your exhaust hoods and ductwork, so be sure to clean grease spatters off your cooking equipment frequently.

Floors: If grease accumulates on your floors, employees may be at risk for a slip and fall accident. Not only will this cause them pain, it could cost your business money. Prevent accidents by cleaning floors daily with a specially formulated grease removing product.

Hot Boxes: One final place grease can buildup is inside the hot box, aka proofing box or steam box, where cooked food is kept warm until serving. Grease inside here is just plain gross and can cause odors that will affect food quality. Have your staff wash and dry the inside of the hot box regularly.

Investigators confirm dirty exhaust system was not a factor.

Earlier this month, a fire broke out in the early hours of the morning at the Wind & Sea Restaurant in Dana Point CA. Though Orange County firefighters responded quickly and extinguished the blaze within 45 minutes, nonetheless there was significant damage to the restaurant. Officials pegged the cost of the fire at roughly $100,000 in damage to the structure and $20,000 in damage to the contents.

Because the fire originated in the kitchen, it was originally suspected to be a grease fire. It was even reported as such in some news outlets. However, with further investigation it was determined that the fire actually had nothing to do with grease in the exhaust system. Instead, officials now say the fire was caused by heat transfer. The nuts and bolts in the dry wood behind a stove had become so hot that they actually ignited a fire.

Why Was a Grease Fire Suspected?

Grease fires are the boogeyman of commercial kitchens, and for good reason. The slow and steady accumulation of grease from cooking activities creates a layer of fast-burning fuel just waiting for an errant spark or temperature spike to ignite. The dangers presented by grease buildup are very real, and it’s only natural that this be considered as a possible cause of any restaurant kitchen fire.

However, it is also important to bear in mind that responsible restaurant owners control this grease buildup with regular kitchen exhaust cleaning in Dana Point CA, including a mix of hand scraping and steam cleaning services. This helps to minimize fire risks. In theory, a restaurant that has kept up with its code-compliant exhaust system cleanings diligently should be at a very low risk of having a grease fire.

Why Should We Have Known Better?

A second look at the details of the Wind & Sea Restaurant fire should reveal some clues as to why we should have known is wasn’t actually a grease fire.

The most important clue has to do with the timing of the fire. The fire began around 1:50 am, after the restaurant had closed. Now, remember that grease fires are flash fires caused by grease either coming in contact with a spark or becoming superheated. Barring the possibility of sparks from faulty wiring (which should not be run anywhere near the greasy surfaces of the exhaust system anyway), it is not likely that a fire could start in this way with no one in the restaurant.

However, a slow, smoldering fire ignited by heat transfer could continue to burn behind the stove long after the appliance was turned off and the kitchen crew had gone home, eventually growing to engulf the kitchen.

What Do We Learn

The main takeaway from this story should be that while kitchen exhaust system cleaning is indeed a vital fire prevention activity, grease buildup is not the only risk your kitchen may face. Don’t let a myopic focus on grease fires prevent you from seeing and addressing the other risks that may exist in your commercial kitchen.

Waste grease can take one of three routes out of a commercial kitchen.

Cooking can be a greasy business. Whether you run a fast-food joint with to-die-for French fries or an upscale restaurant known for grilling up succulent steaks, you’re going to produce a certain amount of waste grease as you work.

So where does all this grease go, and what problems can it pose? Read on to find out.

Up In the Air

The first place that grease goes during cooking is up in the air. As food is cooked, a certain amount of the grease released from the food or the oil it’s cooking in becomes vaporized. In a properly designed commercial kitchen, the greasy air will automatically get sucked up into the exhaust hood. Some of the grease will accumulate on the hood itself and on the grease filter as the air passes through, but not all of it. Any grease that escapes the filter will end up inside the kitchen exhaust ducts.

This presents a major issue because these grease deposits are highly flammable. Fortunately, you can turn to Flue Steam for all the kitchen exhaust cleaning services you may need. We offer hand scraping to keep exhaust hood grease under control, grease filter exchange service to make it easy to enjoy clean filters, and steam cleaning to remove grease from deep inside the ductwork.

Down the Drain

Grease that doesn’t get hot enough to vaporize can end up getting washed down the drain when the kitchen crew does the dishes. This also presents a serious problem, both for the restaurant and for the community, because the grease can clog pipes as well as damage water treatment equipment.

For example, in Perryville MO officials found thousands of pounds of solidified grease in the water system. After working with local commercial kitchens to install grease traps and make other policy changes to keep grease from escaping into the sewer system, city officials report that this problem has decreased significantly. They estimate that $25,000 worth of repairs have been prevented in this first year of the program’s implementation.

Out for Recycling

The last way that grease leaves a commercial kitchen is as part of a recycling program. Many different organizations now offer collection services, often for free. The waste grease can be used for a variety of purposes including as biodiesel for powering vehicles.

Learn about the impact adoption of The Compliance Engine could have on your business.

Earlier this month, the City of Los Angeles announced that it has entered into an agreement to adopt a new software tool to assist fire prevention bureaus in their mission of ensuring fire code compliance. The software, called The Compliance Engine, is provided by Brycer LLC, a strategic partner of the International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Association.

The main focus of The Compliance Engine is on testing and maintenance of fire protection systems, which is typically completed by third party companies. For example, at Flue Steam we offer inspections and maintenance for a key piece of kitchen fire prevention equipment, namely automatic fire suppression systems.

So how will adoption of The Compliance Engine affect your restaurant or other commercial kitchen?

Inspection Reminders: Well, for starters The Compliance Engine is going to make it easier for you to remember to get your routine fire suppression system inspections every 6 months as required by the National Fire Protection Association and your local fire authorities. The software will issue a reminder when it is time for your inspections, complete with the information about your inspector of record, which we hope will be Flue Steam.

Improved Record Keeping: By providing a seamless online channel between commercial building owners, equipment inspectors, and fire prevention bureaus, The Compliance Engine makes it much easier to keep track of all necessary fire suppression equipment inspection reports. No more worrying that the reports are going to somehow get lost between the inspector and the fire prevention bureau, or that issues with handwritten documents are going to cause delays that could make your inspection appear late or overdue. You also don’t have to worry about paper records getting destroyed by natural disasters as all data will be stored in the cloud.

Improved Public Safety: As a member of the community, your business will of course also benefit from what Brycer and the City of Los Angeles anticipate will be an overall improvement in fire safety in the city. For example, promotional materials for The Compliance Engine promise 100 percent code compliance.

Why Choose Flue Steam to Service Your Automatic Fire Suppression Equipment

Considering what an important role your automatic fire suppression equipment plays in the safety of your property and your employees, naturally you don’t want to trust your inspections and maintenance to just anyone. Fortunately, you can rely on Flue Steam to provide superior service whether you need an inspection or need the system reset after a discharge. We have over 43 years of experience in commercial kitchen fire prevention and we understand all kinds of automatic fire suppression equipment as well as relevant fire safety codes.