Exhaust Hood & Duct Cleaning in Omaha, NE
Exhaust cleaning is a fire-protection service, and we run it like one. Grease-laden vapor leaves your cook line, condenses in the hood, and migrates up the duct toward the fan; every foot of that path is fuel with a flash point living directly above your kitchen. NFPA 96 exists because that fuel load, ignited by a flare-up, turns a small line fire into a structure fire in seconds. Our cleaning removes the fuel: we tent the cook line in poly, apply hot caustic degreaser, scrape and pressure-wash the system to bare metal, and verify the result section by section. Inspectors can measure grease depth in your duct; the point of our service is that there is nothing there to measure.
The service is systematic. Appliances are protected and moved as needed, wall panels and filters come out, and we work from the hood interior up through the plenum and duct to the fan. Where duct runs lack access, we document the limitation in the report, and we can install access panels so the next service reaches what this one could not; NFPA 96 requires the entire system to be cleanable, and unreachable duct is where citations and claim disputes originate.
Wastewater is captured and disposed of properly, not sent to your floor drains or the parking lot. Before we leave, the cook line is rinsed, dried, and returned to service-ready condition, with polyethylene down and equipment repositioned. You receive the certification sticker on the hood canopy, dated with our company information and the service performed, plus the photo report by email. Most single-hood kitchens are a three-to-four-hour overnight service; multi-hood systems are quoted after a site walk.
Inside the Service: How We Get to Bare Metal
A technician starts with a walk-through, not a hose. Before any degreaser goes on, we check grease depth at the hood interior, the plenum, and as far up the duct as existing access allows, so the crew knows whether this is a routine quarterly pass or a heavier catch-up job. Poly goes down to protect the cook line and floor, then hot alkaline degreaser is applied to the hood interior, filter track, and plenum surfaces and given time to break the bond between grease and metal. Scrapers and wire brushes handle baked-on buildup in corners and seams that chemical alone will not lift, and a hot-water pressure washer rinses each section to a visual and tactile bare-metal finish, the NFPA-96 standard the whole job is judged against.
Where the duct run has existing access panels, we open them, clean both directions from the opening, and reseal with a fresh gasket so the section stays liquid-tight. Wastewater is vacuumed and captured for proper disposal rather than run to a floor drain. The job closes with a section-by-section check, first by the technician, and the dated certification sticker only goes on the hood once every accessible surface has passed. Whatever the duct could not reach gets written into the report as a limitation, not glossed over, because an honest gap is a smaller problem than an undocumented one.
Why Omaha Kitchens Keep This on a Fixed Schedule
Two audiences check this work without ever picking up a scraper: your fire inspector and your insurance carrier. The Omaha Fire Department's inspection process looks for a current hood sticker and service history that lines up with your cooking volume, and NFPA 96 sets that volume-based schedule plainly: monthly if you run solid fuel, quarterly if you charbroil, wok-cook, or run a 24-hour line, semi-annual for most moderate-volume full-service kitchens, and annual for genuinely low-volume operations. Omaha's restaurant map makes the quarterly tier common rather than rare. Old Market steakhouses and Blackstone's char-heavy concepts push grease loads that would overwhelm a semi-annual schedule, Benson's late-night grills run long hours on the same equipment, and Dundee's neighborhood kitchens often run hot enough on weekend brunch service to load a system faster than their footprint suggests.
Douglas County health inspectors add a second layer, grading visible grease at the hood and filters during routine visits even though their focus is sanitation rather than fire code. Underneath both is the same physical fact: unremoved grease is stored fuel sitting above an open flame, and the frequency table exists because grease fires in under-cleaned systems are a well-established cause of restaurant fires, not a hypothetical risk on a form. Matching your actual cooking volume to the right tier, and proving it with records, is what keeps both inspections short.
Scheduling the Job and Choosing Who Does It
Service happens after close, by default, not as a special request. A crew arrives once the line is cool, works while the kitchen is dark, and leaves it dry and reset before your opening prep starts; single-hood systems usually run three to four hours, so a normal overnight window covers it with room to spare. If your concept does not have a true closed period, tell us; dark days, slow mid-afternoon windows, and split scheduling around a 24-hour line all work, since the requirement is a cool, idle system, not a specific clock time. On choosing a vendor, look past the price line.
Ask what tools and chemistry they use; hot caustic degreaser and mechanical scraping is the standard, and a wipe-and-spray job is not. Ask to see a sample report and photo set before you book, so you know what bare metal looks like when they call a job done. Ask how they handle wastewater, since dumping it on your roof or lot is both illegal and a sign of a shortcut elsewhere in the job. And ask what happens when the duct run has no access panel; a vendor who quietly skips the unreachable section and stickers the hood anyway is handing you a compliance problem, not solving one.
Exhaust Hood & Duct Cleaning FAQs
What does cleaned to bare metal actually mean?
It is the NFPA 96 performance standard: after cleaning, the interior surfaces of the hood, plenum, and duct show bare metal, with no measurable grease film left to fuel a fire. It is verifiable by sight and touch, which is why we photograph surfaces after service. A wipe-down that leaves a shiny hood over a greasy plenum does not meet the standard, and a fire investigator can tell the difference.
How long does a hood cleaning take, and can you work overnight?
Most single-hood systems take three to four hours; larger multi-hood lines run four to eight. Overnight and off-hours service is our default, not an exception, because the system must be cool and your line cannot be cooking during service. Crews commonly start after close and have the kitchen dry and reset before your opening staff arrives. Weekly closures and Monday dark days also work well.
What chemicals and tools actually remove baked-on grease?
Hot alkaline degreaser breaks the bond between grease and metal, then scrapers and wire brushes clear corners and seams the chemical alone will not lift, followed by a hot-water pressure rinse to bare metal. That combination is what separates a real cleaning from a wipe-down; household degreasers and a rag cannot touch grease baked on by months of heat, and no report should claim bare metal without it.
Is the duct-to-fan connection covered in this service, or is that part of the fan visit?
It is covered here. The duct-to-fan transition point is cleaned as part of the full hood and duct service, while the fan's own blades, housing, and containment are handled under the separate rooftop fan service. Book them together, which most Omaha kitchens do, and both meet at that connection point in the same overnight visit with nothing left in between.