BinderHow often does a wood-fired or charcoal kitchen need hood cleaning?
NFPA 96 describes inspection frequencies for the exhaust system by the kind and volume of cooking. Solid fuel operations sit in the most frequent band, which is monthly. That is twelve times a year against the annual interval a low volume kitchen might sit in, and it is the single largest frequency difference in the standard.
What counts as solid fuel
Cooking over wood, charcoal, or another solid fuel. In practice that means wood-fired pizza ovens, charcoal grills and josper-style ovens, wood-burning smokers, and tandoor ovens. The distinguishing feature is a fuel that produces creosote and solid particulate rather than a gas or electric heat source.
The reason for the frequency is the residue. Solid fuel combustion deposits creosote alongside grease, and the mixture accumulates faster and ignites more readily than grease alone.
The way this obligation gets acquired without anybody noticing
Most restaurants running solid fuel did not open that way. A wood oven or a charcoal grill gets added during a menu change, two or three years in, and the hood cleaning contract carries on at its existing interval because nobody revisited it. The equipment changed and the schedule did not.
This is worth checking directly if your menu has changed since your cleaning contract was written. It is also worth mentioning to your cleaner, who may not have been told and may be scoping and pricing against the old kitchen.
Solid fuel often carries other requirements too
Many jurisdictions apply additional provisions to solid fuel cooking, which can include a separate exhaust system from other appliances, specific clearances, and requirements around fuel storage. These vary considerably and are decided locally. Your fire marshal is the authority on which apply to you.
What the record needs to show
At a monthly interval, the record is the whole difficulty. Twelve service documents a year, arriving as email attachments to whoever happened to book the visit, is exactly the pattern that produces a folder with four of them in it. A quarterly or annual system is far easier to keep straight simply because there is less of it.
If you run solid fuel, the record keeping problem is roughly four to twelve times the size of a comparable gas kitchen, and it is worth setting up deliberately rather than by accident. See how NFPA 96 sets the four frequencies.
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 handles a monthly cycle the same way as an annual one. The cleaner sends each report to the location's address and twelve visits produce twelve dated records, without anybody maintaining a spreadsheet.
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