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Flue Steam can keep your food trucks’ exhaust system clean and code-compliant

Food trucks have been popular in big cities like LA for years. With industry revenues up about 12 percent every year for the past five years, it has become more and more tempting for aspiring restaurateurs to try out new ideas in this mobile format. While a food truck does offer the ability to cut lots of the overhead costs you’d have with a brick and mortar restaurant, it also presents some of its own unique challenges. Varying health & permit requirements from town to town, parking struggles, bad weather, and truck maintenance issues can all take their toll, and an estimated 30 percent of new food trucks in LA fail each year.

One reason you should never have to cite for a failed food truck is a kitchen grease fire. Just as in a brick and mortar commercial kitchen, food trucks offering grilled or fried delights must be equipped with exhaust hoods, vents, and fans to safely direct greasy air out of the cooking area before it can collect in the form of residue that could potentially create a fire hazard.

Flue Steam helps food trucks keep their kitchen exhaust systems clean and safe with exhaust hood scraping and steam cleaning services. Considering the short depth of most food truck exhaust hoods, our hand scraping service is ideal for most applications. We use an IKECA comb to measure the amount of grease that has accumulated on your exhaust hood before we begin work and again afterwards, so you can tell exactly how much of a difference we have made. After a while we will be able to tell how fast grease accumulates based on your typical cooking activities. We can then schedule your cleaning visits accordingly so that you only pay for service when you are likely to need it.

A deep steam cleaning may also be required for some food trucks on occasion. This type of cleaning enables us to reach and remove greasy residue in areas that can’t be reached by hand. Whether or not you will need this service for your food truck depends on the design of your exhaust system.

Another way Flue Steam can help prevent fires in your food truck is with fire suppression equipment such as portable fire extinguishers. We sell and refill quality extinguishers that can be securely mounted within easy reach of your cooking surfaces to help suppress any grease fires that may break out outside of the exhaust hood.

Please contact us today to schedule a cleaning for your food truck.

Not sure if your kitchen air control and fire prevention equipment is up to code? Flue Steam can help.

Numerous fire and safety code regulations govern commercial kitchens. Staying in compliance is very important, both from a legal standpoint and for the safety of your employees and customers. At Flue Steam, we are your LA area kitchen air control and fire prevention experts. We can come take a look at your kitchen and recommend any changes or services that may be necessary to remain in compliance with relevant air control and fire prevention safety codes. Here’s an overview of the services we can provide.

Complete Exhaust System Cleaning

Our service technicians are IKECA certified, which means they have completed training courses in the International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Association’s definitive standards for cleaning, inspecting and maintenance of commercial kitchen exhaust systems. This enables them to provide expert assessments of the current condition of your exhaust hoods and ducts and perform high-quality cleaning as needed.

We offer two cleaning services, hand scraping and steam cleaning. Hand scraping is recommended for monthly or quarterly cleaning ofeasy-to-reach areas where grease tends to accumulate most rapidly, such as the exhaust hood. Steam cleaning is recommended for deep cleaning every nook and cranny of the entire exhaust duct system once or twice per year. We’ll help you determine the cleaning frequency that is needed to keep your grease deposits from growing into the danger zone.

Swamp Cooler Maintenance

We also offer expert service for swamp coolers, including annual inspections, cleanings, and tune ups. Our technicians understand the vital role the swamp cooler plays in providing clean, fresh air to your kitchen, and we can help ensure it is always ready to do its job. We can even check that your swamp cooler is correctly sized for your kitchen to ensure no safety hazards are being created by inadequate airflow.

Automatic Fire Suppression System Service

The automatic fire suppression system is a very important failsafe for any commercial kitchen. Our technicians can provide all the services required to keep your system code compliant, such as refilling and resetting the system after a discharge.

Portable Fire Extinguisher Sales & Service

Having functional portable fire extinguishers at strategic locations around the kitchen is not only required by law, but also necessary for nipping small fires in the bud and protecting your property and your employees from grease fires in the kitchen. At Flue Steam, we carry a variety of portable fire extinguishers to help you meet your code obligations. We can also service and refill these extinguishers as needed.

Understanding your swamp cooler is vital for a comfortable kitchen

When it comes to keeping a commercial kitchen cool and smoke-free, most people immediately focus on the exhaust system, which is designed to whisk away hot, smoky, smelly air. However, we also need to think about how cool, fresh air is going to get into the kitchen. That’s where the swamp cooler comes in. If you own or operate a commercial kitchen, you need to know these four things about your swamp cooler.

Is It Properly Sized?

In order to function efficiently and effectively, swamp coolers need to be appropriately sized, not just for the size of the kitchen but for the volume of air that will be removed by the exhaust system. If the swamp cooler doesn’t introduce enough air to replace the removed air, you’ll end up with a vacuum effect in the kitchen, which can cause slamming doors and discomfort for employees. If the swamp cooler produces too much air, it can potentially cause air currents that affect the ability of exhaust hoods to suck up hot, greasy air.

Is It Bringing Clean Air Into The Kitchen?

Of course, it’s important to confirm that the swamp cooler actually is bringing clean air into the kitchen. If the unit is drawing outside air, there could be the possibility of it drawing contaminants like pollen or exhaust fumes into the kitchen. And if the unit has mold or mildew inside, it will certainly be putting out smelly air that may also be laden with allergens.

Where Are Water Lines Located?

Leaking water lines or drains can cause serious damage to your property if not noticed and corrected quickly. Knowing where your water lines are located is quite useful because it allows you to check for signs of water damage regularly.

When Was the Last Time It Was Serviced?

Industry standards dictate that swamp coolers be serviced every six months. It is very important to stay on top of your swamp cooler service schedule to ensure your unit gets the attention it needs to perform its best. At Flue Steam, our technicians can provide expert swamp cooler service, including inspections, cleaning, and repairs. You can rely on us to catch any incipient problems early and recommend the necessary repairs so you can hopefully avoid an emergency situation where your swamp cooler suddenly fails, leaving your kitchen hot, smoky, and stuffy.

Watch out for these three problems to avoid unnecessary loss of revenue at your restaurant

Running a commercial kitchen involves juggling many different responsibilities. Besides making sure the food tastes good, you have to keep the kitchen clean and safe. Here are three possible restaurant-ruining problems to watch out for.

Flooding

Water from a burst pipe or a backed up drain could potentially cause a restaurant closure. Depending on the nature of the problem and the extent of the damage, you could be looking at a few hours or a few weeks of lost business. Drainage problems may be particularly worrisome, as a backed up drain could result in unsanitary water soaking into the carpet or furnishings and requiring total replacement. You can help reduce the risk of water damage closing your restaurant by contacting a plumber for regular inspections and drain cleanings.

Health Code Violation

A health code violation can not only potentially shut your doors but also damage your restaurant’s reputation for months or even years to come, depending on how highly publicized the violation may be and how deep of a mark it makes on online review sites. In order to prevent health code violations from costing you customers, make sure employees understand and comply with all health code requirements. Also, do whatever you can to make it easier for them to stay in compliance—such as setting up chemical dispensers so that cleaning chemicals are always at hand in the proper dilutions.

Kitchen Exhaust System Fire

A fire in your kitchen exhaust system has the potential to cause a minor disruption or a major incident at your restaurant. Best case scenario, the automatic fire suppression system will snuff the fire before your customers even realize anything has happened. However, you may still need to stop cooking on that appliance until the system is inspected and reset. Worst case scenario, the fire could spread through the duct work and into other parts of the building. Even if the fire department arrives quickly and puts out the fire, you’ll still have significant smoke, fire, and water damage to repair. Fortunately, you can prevent kitchen grease fires with help from Flue Steam.

Three Ways Flue Steam Can Help Prevent Fires

Flue Steam specializes in commercial kitchen fire prevention. We offer three important services to help protect your restaurant from losing business due to fire damage.

Kitchen Exhaust System Cleaning: We can provide a combination of kitchen exhaust hood scraping and exhaust duct steam cleaning to remove the grease deposits that could fuel a fire.

Automatic Fire Suppression System Maintenance: We can install and service automatic fire suppression systems to ensure they meet relevant local fire code requirements and can extinguish fires in the exhaust hood quickly.

Grease Filter Exchange Service: We can also come to your restaurant on a regular basis to swap out your dirty grease filter for a clean one, to further help reduce the risk of greasy buildup causing a fire.

Please contact us now to learn more about these important services.

Recent news items highlights the importance of proper exhaust system cleaning protocols

Last November, a fire broke out around the exhaust duct in the kitchen of Pizzeria Toro in Durham NC, causing significant damage to the building. The pizzeria and two neighboring businesses were forced to close, and the three apartments located above the restaurant were also rendered uninhabitable. One of the upstairs tenants has filed a lawsuit against the pizzeria and the company hired to clean its kitchen exhaust system, seeking punitive damages against both companies as well as compensation for emotional distress related to the fire.

The tenant claims that both Pizzeria Toro and the cleaning company, Exhaust Clean, were negligent in their performance of the tasks required to ensure that the kitchen exhaust system was free of fire hazards. However, at a cleaning three weeks before the fire, Exhaust Clean notified Pizzeria Toro that some areas of the exhaust system were inaccessible and therefore impossible to clean. The pizzeria declined to act on this advice, which seems to place responsibility for the resulting fire squarely on the restaurant.

Pizzeria Toro should have known better than to ignore the advice of their exhaust system cleaning company. After all, the pizzeria had already suffered a minor fire in April. This fire, which was in the kitchen ventilation duct, was quickly extinguished and caused little damage, but it still should have served to open the restaurant owner’s eyes to the need for more thorough and frequent cleaning.

This story serves to highlight two important facts about kitchen exhaust system cleaning, namely that it is vital to hire a reputable company and to follow that company’s advice promptly.

Many kitchen exhaust system cleaning companies focus only on cleaning the visible parts of the exhaust system, which provides an eye-pleasing result while leaving hidden dangers lurking deep within the exhaust system. Flue Steam, however, provides truly comprehensive kitchen exhaust system cleanings using steam cleaning equipment that can reach to places where hand scraping tools cannot.

Flue Steam can also assist with the creation of additional access points to facilitate total cleaning of the kitchen exhaust system. This offers our clients a tremendous advantage, because if we identify an inaccessible area we can also offer a solution, rather than leaving restaurant owners at a loss for how to proceed, as perhaps happened in the case of Pizzeria Toro. Any access panels we install are guaranteed to be in compliance with relevant safety standards and will not compromise the integrity of your duct work.

If you’d like to learn more about how Flue Steam can help prevent a dangerous fire—and perhaps a lawsuit—from affecting your restaurant, please contact us any time.