BinderHow long do you have to keep hood cleaning records?
The short answer is that NFPA 96 does not give a retention period. It requires that a certificate be maintained on the premises. It does not say for how long, which is why you will find articles confidently stating three years, and other articles confidently stating two.
What the standard actually requires
When an exhaust system is inspected or cleaned, NFPA 96 calls for a certificate showing the name of the servicing company, the name of the person who performed the work, and the date of the inspection or cleaning, maintained on the premises.
Read that again, because two words in it catch people out. Maintained, meaning it is your record to hold rather than the cleaner's, and on the premises, meaning a copy in a vendor's filing cabinet forty minutes away does not satisfy it at the moment an inspector is standing in your kitchen.
So what decides the number
Three things, and they routinely disagree.
- Your authority having jurisdiction. Local fire codes adopt NFPA 96 with amendments, and some of those amendments add a retention period where the base standard has none. This is the one that can cite you, so it is the one to ask. A phone call to your fire marshal's office answers it in five minutes and costs nothing.
- Your insurer. Carriers ask for cleaning certificates when a kitchen fire claim is filed. The policy, not the fire code, decides what you need to produce then, and it is frequently a longer window than anything the fire code asks for.
- Your franchisor or landlord. If you operate under a franchise agreement or a triple net lease, the document you signed may specify record keeping obligations that exceed both of the above.
The practical answer
Keep everything. The reason people ask this question is that keeping records used to have a real cost: filing cabinets, physical space, someone to maintain them. A PDF costs nothing to keep and the cost of not having one is a re-inspection fee at best.
The failure this question is really about is not retention. It is that the records were never collected in one place to begin with, so "how long do I keep them" is being asked by someone who has just discovered they have none.
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 gives each location an email address. Your hood cleaner sends the report there, or you forward the one you already have, and it is filed against that location with the date it was performed. When an inspector asks for two years of history, you send a link rather than searching an inbox.
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