Pasta cooking- How bad can it get?

Looking up the hood we can see the scrape marks where

someone tried to clean.

And when we look around the corner above the hood,

we can see where the cleanings stopped!!

A facility that sautes pasta uses a national vendor who subcontracts out all their work. There have been many questions in the past on how much grease pasta cooking actually produces. The national vendor requires pictures of all jobs. Please note that this is a difference vendor than previous posts as this one does not really specialize in grease exhaust vent system cleanings, they just do it as another service. I would assume that someone looks at the pictures and goes out to check on jobs. I know the others claim to do this although you can see clearly in earlier posts that they are not looking at hardly anything. Back to the point, take a look at these pictures and it is unbelievable how much grease these pasta saute places can produce. It is obvious by the pictures that this system has not been done in a long time(if ever), even though the hood sticker states it was done approximately a month ago. The worst part is that this is in a multi use tower in a downtown area. Imagine the fire and resulting damages to life and property if this grease ignited? I don't know when it would stop burning!!

National KEC Contractors using subs- Broken promises AGAIN?

Looking up the stack from the

hood you can see grease in the

distance. It looks fairly clean

but when we look around the corner

Here is the horizontal past what

we could see. I wonder if these

pictures were ever posted on

the national companies web site.

This had just been cleaned!!??

Looking down from the roof, this

looks fairly clean, however....

Looking into stack, you can see that there is

years of grease and that is a block of wood in the duct

on the left side under all that grease!!

Looking up stack appears clean

But when we look around corner,

(this is a simple single stack oven system that

produces very little grease so we

know this is at least 10-20 years of

buildup.

I just finished inspecting several stores for a restaurant chain that is currently using a national vendor. They have been doing their locations for many years now with pictures from each cleaning job available on line. I question where the picture are actually getting taken from. As you can see, none of the horizontal ductwork has been cleaned in a very long time if ever. In fact, there is still a large block of wood buried in the grease in the duct from when the store was constructed over 20 years ago at one location. The pictures tell the story. These locations had also just been recently "cleaned" with full "pictures" of the completed job. You can see looking down the stacks what was cleaned, when you look past that in the hidden areas, WOW! Someday, these national companies are going to held accountable for their actions and the danger they put everyone in. I just hope we don't have someone injured or even killed as a result of their complete neglect and greed.

New York, Massachusetts, and Ohio Seminars

Hi Y'all,

It's National Fire Safety Month. After a 2 and 1/2 weeks world wind tour across the country I am back home for a few days until the IKECA technical seminars in Atlantic City the first week in November. I had Inspections and meetings in Texas for a week followed by all day seminars (along with Nelson Dilg from Nelbud Services) on grease exhaust system inspections, maintenance, and construction in Holyoak, Massachusetts and Albany, New York(both were eligible for CEU credits for the participants) and then I was off to Columbus Ohio. We owe a great deal of thanks to our sponsors. First of all, the expenses for both Hollyoak and Albany seminars were covered by Americlean in New York. Even with Nelson Dilg and Myself donating our time, they were substantial and everyone appreciates it. Next were the Hollyoak Fire Department for the Massachusetts seminar and Simplex Grinell for the New York Seminar. Attendance was huge with over 120 people at the Massachusetts seminar including some KEC companies, various code officials, building engineers, restaurant staff, etc. The New York seminar was almost as large with the same amount (or even more) of code officials minus the KEC companies. We thank Nelson for donating his time and expertise. The programs went extremely well detailing out various issues with KEC and grease exhaust systems. There were great questions at both events including all the issues with access plates(UL listing for some sandwich plates are not for grease exhaust) and type 2 systems(In my opinion, they should not exist over any cooking equipment!!). I was then off to Columbus, OH to do another seminar for Nationwide/Allied Insurance. As in the past, one of the best companies in the world to work with and they were also very receptive with lots of good questions. We could have gone another hour easily. Last, I was at Hardgrove Cleaning in Columbus for a quality control seminar for their crews and management staff. Tonya and Hans Hardgrove were very gracious hosts as always. It is encouraging to see the enthusiasm of some of the IKECA member companies like Hardgrove as they strive to make improve their quality. The seminars gave me hope that we are all moving in the right direction, especially after the disasters I found during my inspection tours. I will post of those later. Massachusetts has adopted some of the most strict fire codes for grease exhaust vent systems in the country. They may be moving toward the same picture program Mpls, MN has adopted. New York just informed me the they have now adopted the new NFPA96-2008 edition. Nelson, Bernard, Myself, and the rest of IKECA are available for seminars upon request. While we cannot make the KEC companies around the world clean to standards, we are working very hard to educate them and to lead by example so the world will be a safer place.