Hood Cleaning Cost: What a Commercial Kitchen Should Expect to Pay

Most hood cleaning companies won’t put a price on their website. We will, because the question deserves a straight answer, and because the cheapest number on a quote is usually the most expensive service you can buy.

The Short Answer

For a single-hood kitchen in the Central Valley, the Bay Area or Northern California, a complete roof-to-hood cleaning with a measured report most often lands between $500 and $900 per visit. Two to three hoods on a shared duct run typically $800 to $1,500 or more. Large lines with multiple duct runs, rooftop units and long horizontal duct run $1,500 to $3,000 or more and are quoted after a site assessment, because the duct is where the time goes and nobody can see it from the kitchen floor.

Those are ranges, not a menu. Here is what moves a job inside them.

What Drives the Price

Cooking volume and fuel type. A charbroiler or solid-fuel line builds grease faster than a soup-and-salad kitchen, and NFPA 96 inspects it more often. More frequent service usually means a lighter cleaning each time, which is why quarterly customers often pay less per visit than a kitchen that calls once a year.

Duct length and access. Every elbow, every vertical run, every section without an access panel adds time. A system with proper access panels is cleaned faster and cleaned fully. One without them may need panels installed before anyone can honestly say the duct was cleaned.

The fan. The rooftop exhaust fan has to be tipped, the wheel and housing cleaned, the hinge kit and grease containment checked. A quote that doesn’t mention the fan is a quote for part of the system.

Grease depth at the start. We measure it in microns before we begin. A system that has drifted past 2,000 microns is a cleaning; one that has gone far beyond that is a recovery, and it costs more because it takes longer to get it cleaned to NFPA 96 standards.

What a Real Quote Includes

A price is only comparable when the scope is. Before you compare two numbers, make sure both cover the same things:

• Hood and plenum, duct full length including elbows, fan housing and wheel, and rooftop grease containment
• Grease depth readings in microns, before and after, by section
• Before-and-after photos of each section
• Any deficiency found, written down, with a recommendation
• A report and certificate you can hand to the fire marshal, your landlord and your insurer

If a quote is a third of the others, ask which of those it leaves out. The answer is usually the duct and the fan.

Why the Cheapest Clean Costs the Most

A cleaning that stops at the hood face leaves fuel in the duct and the fan. The system looks finished from the kitchen. On the roof it isn’t. If there is ever a fire, the adjuster doesn’t ask what the cleaning cost. They ask for the report, and a report with no measurements and no duct photos tells them where the work stopped.

The service you pay for is the one that produces a record you’d be comfortable handing to someone with a financial interest in finding a gap.

What Cleaning Pros Plus, LLC Charges For

We quote after a site assessment because the duct and the roof decide the job, not the hood. Our crew are PECT Designated Technicians, our founder is a Certified Exhaust System Inspector (CESI) #200771 and a Certified Exhaust Cleaning Specialist (CECS) #200452, and Cleaning Pros Plus, LLC is an IKECA member, #76716495. Every service comes with grease depth readings in microns, photos of every section, and a report written for the day someone asks for it.

Schedule Site Assessment: www.cleaningprosplus.com/site-assessment/

About the Author

Arthur Haggerty is the founder of Cleaning Pros Plus, LLC and the family of companies — EvidLY, HoodOps and Stovio Advisors. He is a Certified Exhaust System Inspector (CESI) #200771 and a Certified Exhaust Cleaning Specialist (CECS) #200452, an IKECA member (#76716495), and has been retained as an NFPA 96 expert witness.