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What records should I get before changing hood cleaning companies?

Published · Compliance Binder

Changing service providers is the single most common way a compliance history develops a hole. The work continues without interruption, the new company starts a clean file, and the two or three years the previous company held quietly become unreachable.

Why the gap appears

Most operators have no complete copy of their own history, because reports arrived as email attachments over several years and were never collected. The practical archive lives on the vendor's system. That arrangement works fine right up until the moment you stop being their customer, at which point responsiveness to requests for old paperwork drops sharply, and reasonably so.

What to request from the outgoing company

  • Every service report or certificate they hold for your address, not the most recent one.
  • Dates of each service, which is the part that matters if you are ever asked to show a cleaning interval was maintained.
  • Any before and after photographs. Many kitchen exhaust cleaners take these as standard and they are useful evidence of condition over time.
  • Notes of anything they reported as needing attention, for example inaccessible duct runs, damaged access panels, or a fan needing service.

Ask while you are still a customer, in writing, and ask for PDFs by email rather than a promise to post copies.

What to give the incoming company

A new cleaner arriving with no history has to guess at scope. Handing them the last two reports and any outstanding recommendations means the first visit is priced and scoped against reality, and it prevents a first invoice that surprises everybody because nobody mentioned the run over the roof.

Set the record habit up at the start

The moment to establish where reports get sent is when you are agreeing terms with a new provider, not two years later. A single line in the first email asking them to send every report to a specific address is easy to agree to while they are winning your business.

The same applies to the question of who files with the city if your jurisdiction requires it. See whether a filing counts as your record.

This page describes what published standards say. It is not legal advice and it is not a determination about any premises. The requirements that apply to your building, including how often work must be done and what must be kept, are set by your authority having jurisdiction, which is usually your local fire marshal or health department. Where this page and your inspector disagree, your inspector is right.

Keeping this straight without thinking about it

Binder keeps the history against the location rather than against the vendor, so changing companies does not interrupt the record. Old reports stay where they are, the new company's reports join the same timeline, and the interval remains provable across the change.

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