9 stores closed after Mall Grease exhaust Fire

Area above food court

pouring smoke out during

grease exhaust fire.

Here is why proper inspection programs with full pictures of each and every cleaning (not the partial pictures the National Vendors try to pass off on cleanings that were done improperly) and full accountability are so important!
9 Ala Moana stores remain closed after fire. HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -Nine stores and restaurants at Ala Moana shopping center are still closed because of yesterday's fire. On Thursday a fire forced the evacuation of the Ala Moana food court. HFD says the fire started at the Panda Express Kitchen and spread into the mall food court trunk line grease duct system. Firefighters are looking into whether the restaurant and Mall management followed the proper cleaning schedule for the duct.An unattended wok containing oil sparked the blaze.

Here is a list of the stores that are still temporarily closed:

Makai Market Food Court:

Hibachi

Yummy Korean BBQ

Soba-ya

Panda Express

Sbarro

Mall Level 2 Merchants:

Papyrus

Bag ‘n Baggage

Mall Level 3 Merchants:

American Eagle

Aeropostale

Copyright 2011 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

Why have on the job inspections of KEC(Kitchen Exhaust Cleanings)?

Looking up from the hood at one location, you can see

where the unscrupulous cleaning companies clean only

what can be seen.

But placing the camera around the corner we see different.

And looking into the first horizontal run, we can see this has not

been done in years. This job was just "Cleaned" 3 weeks

prior to these pictures.

Another restaurant in same community, you can see

the small area cleaned from above in the vertical riser

in the middle of the picture. The rest of this horizontal

plenum above a char broiler has not been cleaned in years

as you can see clearly. This job had just been "cleaned" 2 weeks

prior. The clean parts were still fairly clean with less than 5 microns

of grease buildup.

One of the communities in the midwest once had one of the top KEC inspection programs in the state only a few years ago. They eliminated the permit program and the on site inspection of the cleanings. At its height, all systems were cleaned to NFPA96 standards with no inaccessible areas and they had one of the best track records in the country. Now, only a few years later, there are vast areas not getting cleaned as the KEC vendors now are all trying to beat each other on pricing and are now skipping areas to reduce costs now that no one is looking any more. Most of the restaurants have no ideas that this is going on or maybe are simply accepting the risk similar to what the companies using National KEC vendors are doing. If one ever wondered if a program works and how fast things go downhill without someone watching, the picture here are proof of what the reality that even some of the companies that were passing inspection previously are now skipping almost everything past what can be seen from the hood. All of these picture are from the same city, different restaurants.

IKECA Meetings and fire inspections

Attendees at the AHJ training seminar.

Good to see everyone at the Milwaukee Technical Meetings. We have 40 Code officials (AHJ's) from Milwaukee, Madison, MN, and Canada attend the AHJ training seminar on Wednesday. I hope everyone learned something. Jeff Shadegg from the Inver Grove Heights Fire Department made a presentation on Friday about their grease exhaust inspection program. He has been doing this for over 20 years. Since he started the IGH program, they have eliminated grease exhaust fires!! With a low cost permit program and checking almost every single cleaning done right at the end of the jobs, the program has eliminated shortcut cleaning jobs along with the dangers and risks to the facilities. Jeff would be a good source for cities looking into their own program. Proper grease exhaust cleaning inspection programs can potentially save cities, restaurants, and insurance companies millions of dollars a year plus untold lives that are affected by the fires. John Lee, a Windsor, Canada Fire inspector also presented about their new program and they are finding the same things as all programs do at the start with vast areas not done to NFPA96 standards and the claims by the KEC companies that the duct are inaccessible. This claim is such a bogus line in my opinion and unacceptable. Proper UL listed access plates can easily be installed and the systems are not really inaccessible, the truth is the companies simply are not professionally evaluating the systems during their bid process and including and requiring proper access. My saying is simple. "There are no inaccessible areas, only areas people choose not to access." When you see "inaccessible areas cleaned" on a hood sticker, it is a possible warning that some or all areas were not cleaned and you still have a huge fire danger. I know this is standard on many canned hood stickers, but that statement needs to go away on a certification sticker. I think only systems completely cleaned should be certified!! That is my opinion and if followed, it will lead to a lot less confusion on what was actually cleaned or not. It also holds the cleaning companies and restaurants accountable. I tell all KEC companies that they should refuse to clean a job that will not allow them to install proper access and that proper access MUST be a precondition to taking on any job or bid.

Call for help from Competitor??

Looking up from the hood, the KEC company

"certified" this as clean

We look closer and see the areas you can see from below

do not look too bad and might have passed if the inspector

had not looked further up into the duct. We see only the

small part that they actually did get clean. It is almost

like they had someone spotting them to clean what can

visually be seen from below.

And looking up into the horizontal above the hood with

a camera on a monopod, this is what the rest of the

system actually looked like in this "Certified clean" system.

I got an interesting call from a KEC company owner cleaning an oriental concept with a longer horizontal duct run. The Fire Marshal had just failed the cleaning job and ordered it re-cleaned. The inspector had asked for pictures of the job, but the KEC company said he forgot, but he will certify that the system was indeed completely clean to NFPA96 standards. The inspector did not believe him for some reason and took pictures himself that I have posted above. The KEC company owner then asked how to get into the duct to clean it since we had a crew clean the system a couple years ago and the inspector had our pictures showing the same areas spotless. He also whined and complained on how hard these jobs are and how bad he underbid it. I told him there are access plates in the system that he should use and that he simply needs to get in there and get the job clean. He said the only access were above the hood and he sure wasn't going to "Crawl" up there!!??? Now one wonders how this company cleans systems that are not inspected with horizontal runs? Note: I made it to the access plate with ease and I am not a small person as those who know me can attest.

Don

What you really pay for from your Kitchen Exhaust Cleaner

This job has just been completed the previous week.....

The only part of the system that was actually cleaned

was this outside of the exhaust fan

Looking at the intake of the fan on the rear system,

we see it was not tipped

back

Looking up from the fryer hood, we see only about 4 "

were actually cleaned

And when we stick the camera up the stack to look inside

the horizontal we see that not only was it never done

but there is proper access at the end of the duct as we

can plainly see in the far end

I just had a manager bring up an interesting point on value of a KEC (Kitchen exhaust cleaning) job. We were looking at a job that was just completed by a KEC company. As you can see in the pictures, only about 4 inches were cleaned up from the hood above a fryer system and about a foot down from the roof for the same system with none of the actual ductwork getting done on the other system. The fan screws were never removed or the fan tipped back. He said he paid about $400 for this cleaning. With over 20 feet of linear feet of ductwork both vertically and horizontally, he figures he paid about $400 per foot give or take a few dollars. By figuring apples to apples on the cleaning, he said the cost of cleaning the entire system by this company would be over $8000.00 at the "inexpensive rate" he had. There are many national. regional, and local KEC programs with per store pricing that seem like a good price but...... They may be inexpensive per store, but there are many that are in the thousands of dollars per foot range. Many of these restaurants are really getting "taken to the cleaners" or more literally "Taken BY the cleaners". He pointed out, that is what he is really paying for the cheap company is the $400 per foot when in reality $20-$40 per foot(depending on duct run and accessibility) is more in line that the quality companies end up charging for doing the system correctly for his particular concept. You cannot use a per foot price for bids of course as all systems are different, but it is a good analogy on value and why you need to inspect the cleanings and be very careful during the bid process on what you are getting for your money. This concept is not a large grease producer but you can see what happens after a few years when the inexpensive company skips areas. This store is only 4 years old. The manager said that the worst part is that they thought their system was safe from fire all this past 4 years that they were paying for this work every 6 months. He was not only "hosed" by the cleaning company, but could have been "hosed" again with the fire department attempting to put a grease fire out.

Picture programs

Looking into a horizontal past what has

been getting cleaned previously, we see where the KEC

was avoiding cleaning and careful avoided taking

pictures of this area leaving a major fire hazard.

Without baseline pictures, the

inspector had no idea how bad of shape the system was

in or that the horizontal was even there.

Looking inside a gaylord hood just cleaned by

a well known National Vendor, the inspector never

received pictures of this area. This job has been sneaking

by for over a year.

Hi to all,
Jack and I are doing a picture program overview at the IKECA technical seminar to go over proven programs and technics. Even after 40 years of using pictures and video for job verifications, we are still learning, evolving, and improving almost daily ways to implement and use pictures for jobs. There are two primary uses for your pictures. One is to verify the job was done properly along with preexisting pictures of deficiencies found. I also like to have a couple of before pictures to show customers where their systems are in excellent shape as far as deficiencies go before the job starts. You always want everything to be extremely thorough and objective with a proper program. The other is for sales use to show the customers how good of a job you are actually doing. Of course from the sales perspective, the more buildup at the start, the better it looks when the system is spotless in the end. When I view inspection pictures however, I do not really like before pictures mixed in unless requested to view normal buildup in the system. What happens is that the pictures can become confusing. The more confusing pictures are, the more likely you are not seeing the actual overall condition of the system. I had several kitchen exhaust cleaners actually bragging to me that they breath on the lenses of the cameras to "Fog" the pictures up so their bosses and customers cannot see what they misses. I require fuzzy pictures to be retaken. All pictures other than the most simple straight up systems do need a picture description. This does not mean renaming the pictures as that can compromise security. I require the original camera numbers on the pictures and in order. A fast way for picture descriptions is to have a word file with generic names already listed that you can copy and paste from in your e-mail or attached PDF file that goes with the pictures and simply use what you need from the list and change the picture numbers to match your actual picture numbers. I also require a dated work order picture IN SEQUENCE. This is another good security measure to help avoid staff using fake or duplicated pictures. New technologies are now including GPS coordinates with the dates imbedded in the pictures which will lead to greater picture security. I highly recommend using a waterproof and shockproof digital camera for grease exhaust pictures. Standard digital camera simply do not hold up and are difficult to keep clean. You will end up with grease and moisture on the camera that will have to be removed. For longer systems, you may even need to use a video camera in addition to the digital camera. No matter what, you will need baseline pictures of the complete system to verify that future cleaning pictures are complete and actually of the same system. Even honest staff can mix up picture when doing several jobs a night. Adding the work order picture are we require helps separate jobs and keeps the confusion down. Remember that we are not in a perfect world and camera chips can and do go bad or pictures are accidentally erased. There are several good picture recovery programs out there, (I use KLIX),but they often re-date the pictures that are recovered. Without the embedded work order with the job and date, you might not have any idea which job is which. Finally, you need to actually view each and every single job. I just received pictures from a job with some colorful language written into the grease. The KEC owner was extremely embarrassed. I think they will be checking their pictures more closely before sending next time. I have viewed numerous web based programs and it is obvious not one is looking. The posted pictures are often very incomplete and many include pictures with vast areas of grease buildup. Maybe leaving grease in the system is acceptable to them, but it is NOT acceptable to NFPA96 standards nor to most AJH. (inspectors). I have just assisted going through several jobs in a current picture program for and inspector and it was appalling what was getting missed. We did find out that there are no baseline pictures built into the program so the inspector really had no idea what they were looking at. The unscrupulous KEC vendors(unfortunately that is almost all of the KEC vendors) know this and carefully avoid taking pictures of areas they do not clean. Remember, you really should take you own baseline pictures so you know exactly where the system goes and what the inside looks like. Clean duct picture are best as you can see spots, welds, other things in the metal to match up with the pictures that are sent to you. Finally, unless the pictures are obvious, you need a good picture description list so you know what you are looking at. This and a drawing if the system is complicated. Here is a typical list we use for one concept.

(Picture number-description)

1- Work order

2- Hood overview Showing all front hoods before

3- Hood overview Showing all rear hoods before

4- Up riser from Wok 1 hood before

5- Up riser from Wok 2 hood before

6- Up riser from Pantry hood before

7- Up riser from Prep hood before

8- Roof overview showing all fans and roof area around fans

9- Wok 1 Fan before

10- Wok 2 Fan before

11- Pantry Fan before

12- Prep Fan before

13- Wok 1 Fan bowl(outlet side) after

14- Wok 2 Fan bowl(outlet side) after

15- Pantry Fan bowl(outlet side) after

16- Prep Fan bowl(outlet side) after

17- Wok 1 Fan intake after

18- Wok 2 Fan intake after

19- Pantry Fan intake after

20- Prep Fan intake after

21- Back of Wok 1 fan blades after

22- Back of Wok 2 fan blades after

23- Back of Pantry fan blades after

24- Back of Prep fan blades after

25- Down Wok 1 vertical from roof after

26- Down Wok 2 vertical from roof after

27- Down Pantry vertical from roof after

28- Down Prep vertical from roof after

29- Roof overview after showing all fans and roof clean

30- Up riser from Wok 1 hood showing all 4 sides of duct including connection with

hood.

31- Up riser from Wok 2 hood showing all 4 sides of duct including connection with

hood.

32- Up riser from Pantry hood showing all 4 sides of duct including connection with

hood.

33- Up right riser from Prep hood showing all 4 sides of duct including connection

with hood.

34- Up left riser from Prep hood showing all 4 sides of duct including connection with

hood. (only one riser picture needed on systems with straight up verticals)

35- Inside of horizontal plenum for prep system from either side. (where applicable)

36- Wok 1 Hood filter trough (lower)

37- Wok 2 Hood filter trough (lower)

38- Pantry Hood filter trough (lower)

39- Prep Hood filter trough (lower)

40- Wok 1 Hood filter rail back side behind filters with bottom of riser

showing(Upper)

41- Wok 2 Hood filter rail back side behind filters with bottom of riser

showing(Upper)

42- Pantry Hood filter rail back side behind filters with bottom of riser

showing(Upper)

43- Prep Hood filter rail back side behind filters with bottom of riser showing(Upper)

44- Outside of Front hoods complete with stickers

45- Outside of Rear hood complete with sticker

Sneaky, cunning, and caught!!

The latest tale is one of a well know local KEC vendor with that was well thought of previous to this episode. So desperate for work were they they they lost their integrity completely. After bidding on a very large exhaust cleaning project in a large city downtown area, they were awarded the bid by underbidding everyone substantially. Upon doing the job, they were requested pictures proving the job was complete. As they had not really cleaned much of the system, the head of the company claimed "I am so sorry, we were not complete" when confronted with pictures from the FM showing the missed areas. They then completed the job and promised pictures of the completed project. An entire cleaning cycle went by before the pictures arrived. With the pictures unclear and obviously missing many areas, the FM re-inspected. Vast areas were again found not cleaned. The KEC vendor was warned that they faced possible legal action plus other actions if not complete to NFPA standards. The unscrupulous vendor stated- "Well it has been a few months, can't we get paid for the re-clean? Besides we were never told about some of the ductwork on the next floor up and my sales guy missed in when bidding the job so we need to charge extra for that." translation: "we blew the bid and shortcut the job, but we hope you are ignorant enough to pay us extra money for it!" Of course the extra would have made them the highest bid. They were told very firmly to re-clean (actually finish cleaning) the system to NFPA96 and IKECA standards as they agreed to do and prove it is clean. As they had lowered themselves to the lowest standards and knew how little time FM's have to follow up, they again re-cleaned the system and again waited another entire cleaning cycle before sending in the pictures which again were showing grease buildup and did not show any of the multistory vertical riser that was one of the areas the FM found quite a bit of old built up grease in the bottom few floors pus missed areas in the main duct lines again. Being sneaky and once again thinking if they wait until the FM cannot possibly prove if the job was properly cleaned or not, they once again waited months before sending pictures of the 3rd re-clean. Now the customer has been through at least 4-5 cycles without the system being cleaned and no way to prove much of it. FM's and managers need to know that this waiting game with pictures and job completion notifications is a trick by companies without integrity to try to slide by with as little work as possible. These type of companies want everything confusing so it is more difficult for the management of the grease exhaust vent system to determine exactly what is going on. Do not allow this, timely inspections are a must along with clear pictures and showing the entire system. If it is a longer system like the one in our tale, also have them send a list where each picture was taking from along with a drawing of the system to clearly show you area looking at everything. The moral of the story, in wasting everyone's time and leaving the store in danger, they not only did not get paid for the re-cleans, they will never again work for this chain. They were bidding out other work in the same city and you don't have to guess how easy a decision it was for the restaurant to not use them for the other service also. They should have simply done the job properly in the first place.

Don

IKECA Annual and Fall Meetings

Thanks to everyone who attended the IKECA Annual meeting in Naples Florida at the Hilton Hotel. It was sure hot down there especially going back to snow in MN afterwards. We all had a good time with a fabulous keynote speaker in Richard Flint. I highly recommend his books, video's and seminars. There was much work with the IEKCA Consensus Body meeting to review over 100 comments for the new IKECA C10 ANSI standard. The body worked overtime to complete their tasks and we had a good size crowd reviewing the process. I am glad to see members interested in the standard making process. There were a lot of good comments made and reviewed. I look forward to seeing everyone in Milwaukee for the fall seminars. Jack Grace and I are going to do a seminar on proper picture programs and I welcome all comments and requests on what you would like to see. We will show current programs and what we have seen both work and fail in the past. We will also show some new technologies. There will be many other seminars for staff of various levels.

Side wall fan hinge setup

Many side wall fans have access issues where the ductwork is tucked above a chase way or permanent ceiling that is difficult if not almost impossible to get to. Also, continued access into ceiling tiles will require occasional replacement of the tiles as they were never really meant for continuous use every 3 or 6 months. I recommend installed hinges on the fans where inside access issues exist. Please note the structural support in the picture needed for proper sidewall fan hinges plus it is a good idea to set up a lock to keep unwanted guests out of the fan. It is like a door to the ductwork so you still need to secure it. This way, instead of crawling above a ceiling area with possible leaky access plates, you simply open up the fan similar to the roof mount upblast fans with hinges. Don't forget to install with the air intake facing DOWN!! This prevents rain from entering into the fan. You will also need to plan for additional flexible conduit to allow proper clearance. When complete, the cost for the side wall fan hinge is similar to an access plate, but far easier to use.

Don

Grandpa Don

I am so proud that I had to post at least one personal blog. Here is a picture of my new (and first) granddaughter Brianna who was born last week to son Brandon and his lovely Cedar. Enjoy!

Fraudulent Pictures

I consider this to be fraud. The KEC company took over 40 pictures of their cleaning of this system last week. They submitted them to the facilities manager as complete system cleaned to bare metal. When I did my baseline pictures of the system 4 days later, we found that the pictures were taken of a 4' area above the hood for they cleaned and avoided the other 90 feet plus of the system. The pictures speak for themselves.

Inspections pictures for ductwork with Electronic Precipitator

Inspection last week inside of the ductwork between the

hood and the Electronic Precipitator. (Taken from the hood)

While Electronic Precipitators work very well when maintained, there are still major issues that need to be addressed. As you can see in the picture above, the ductwork up to the precipitator still needs to be serviced as often as any duct without the unit. The KEC company doing this work obviously did not think cleaning anything past the hood was needed. Even past the Electronic precipitator needs inspections regularly also cleanings are needed less frequently when they are properly maintained. Remember that they will fail and all of the system will need to be cleaned if you fail to keep a proper service contract in place and keep the filters clean and in working order.