Exhaust Hood Cleaning in North York
An exhaust hood is the canopy over a cooking line, and its job is to capture vapour at the source and contain it long enough for the system to pull it away. Elite Hood Cleaning North York cleans Type 1 grease canopies and Type 2 heat hoods, opens the plenum behind the filters, and checks whether the hood is still capturing properly once it is clean. Pricing starts at $385 as part of a system visit.
Type 1 and Type 2 hoods are not interchangeable
Knowing which one is over your line decides what the cleaning has to achieve and what the fire code expects of it.
| Type 1 vs Type 2 | Type 1 grease canopy | Type 2 heat and condensate hood |
|---|---|---|
| What it sits over | Fryers, ranges, char grills, broilers, woks, solid fuel | Dishwashers, steamers, kettles, ovens producing heat and steam only |
| What it handles | Grease-laden vapour and smoke | Heat, steam and condensate, with negligible grease |
| Filtration | Listed baffle filters, liquid-tight construction, sloped to a drain | Often mesh or simple screens, or no grease filtration at all |
| Fire suppression | Suppression system required over the appliances it serves | Not required, because the fuel is not present |
| Cleaning driver | Fire load, on a regulated interval | Hygiene, scale and condensate, on an operational interval |
| What goes wrong | Grease film through hood, plenum and duct | Mineral scale, biofilm and dripping onto clean dishes |
Kitchens frequently have both, and the two hoods often sit within a few feet of each other with completely different requirements. Treating a Type 2 dish hood as if it were a grease canopy wastes money. Treating a Type 1 canopy as if it were a dish hood is how a building ends up with a duct fire.
The plenum is the part of the hood nobody sees
It sits directly behind the filter bank, and on a neglected system it holds more grease than everything visible put together.
Pull the baffle filters out of a canopy and you are looking into the plenum: the chamber that collects what the filters threw out of the airstream and funnels it toward the duct. On a well-designed hood it slopes toward a drain point or a removable cup, so liquid grease has somewhere to go. On a hood that has run hard without cleaning, that slope is buried under a hardened layer and the drain is sealed shut.
Cleaning the plenum properly means scraping rather than wiping. Cooking grease that has been repeatedly heated polymerises into a varnish that bonds to steel, and no amount of degreaser and cloth removes it in one pass. It is mechanical work, done from underneath, with the filters out and the surfaces below fully protected.
This is also the section that reveals the truth about a previous contractor. A canopy interior can be made to look excellent in fifteen minutes. A plenum cannot. When a kitchen's paperwork says it has been cleaned twice a year for three years and the plenum is caked, the paperwork is describing a different job than the one that happened.
When a clean hood still fails to capture
Capture is the hood pulling vapour in at the source. Containment is holding it there long enough to be extracted. Both can fail for reasons cleaning does not touch.
The complaint sounds the same every time: smoke rolling out from under the front edge of the canopy, haze building through service, staff eyes stinging by the end of a shift. Grease loading is the first suspect and often the correct one, because filters clogged solid and a caked plenum genuinely choke the airflow. Cleaning fixes that outright.
When it does not, the remaining causes are mechanical or architectural, and they get reported with photographs rather than quietly cleaned around. A worn or slipping fan belt drops the fan speed. Filters of the wrong size leave gaps that let air bypass the bank instead of passing through it. A hood that does not overhang the appliance far enough on the front and sides cannot capture what rises at the edges. Most commonly in this borough, the make-up air is wrong: a sealed plaza unit with a powerful exhaust and no path for replacement air ends up so negative that the hood cannot pull, doors become hard to open, and pilots blow out.
Elite Hood Cleaning North York does not repair fans, alter ductwork or modify hoods. What you get is a straight diagnosis with photographs so a mechanical contractor is quoting from evidence rather than from a phone description.
Quick test: If the kitchen doors are hard to pull open while the exhaust runs, the problem is make-up air, and no amount of cleaning will fix the capture.
What gets done to the hood itself
The canopy work inside a system visit, in order.
Protect and isolate
Cooking surfaces, prep benches and floors below the canopy are sheeted, gas and power to the line are isolated, and the fan is locked out before any panel is opened.
Strip the hood
Filters out, light diffusers out where fitted, and any removable baffles or grease cups taken down so the full interior surface is exposed.
Scrape and degrease
Canopy interior, underside, corners, welds and plenum treated with degreaser and worked mechanically back to bare metal where the surface allows it.
Clear the drain path
The plenum slope, drain point and grease cup cleared so liquid grease can run to where it is meant to collect instead of pooling and creeping into the duct.
Rebuild and check capture
Clean filters reinstalled in the correct orientation, the fan restarted, and capture observed at the cooking line before the visit closes.
Photograph and report
Before-and-after images of the canopy interior and the plenum, plus a note of anything that will not be solved by cleaning, such as filter fit, hood overhang or suspected airflow issues.
Common questions about hood cleaning
Can the hood be cleaned without touching the duct or the fan?
Physically yes, and sometimes that is genuinely all a kitchen needs between full services. Understand what it buys you though: a hood-only visit improves capture and hygiene but leaves the duct and fan loaded, so it does not answer an inspector or an insurer asking about the system. For that, book the full exhaust system clean.
Why does the stainless still look dull after cleaning?
Because the target is bare metal, not shine. Years of heating and cooling discolour stainless steel permanently, and the heat tint that remains is not grease. A hood cleaned to the standard can look duller than one that has been polished with a dressing product, and the polished one may still have a loaded plenum behind it.
Does a Type 2 dish hood need cleaning on the same schedule?
No. A Type 2 hood carries heat, steam and condensate rather than grease, so its interval is driven by hygiene and scale rather than fire load. It still needs attention, because condensate dripping onto a dish line is a real problem, but it does not belong on the Type 1 schedule and should not be priced as if it did.
My hood has a water-wash system. Is that the same thing?
A water-wash hood rinses its own plenum on a cycle, which reduces build-up but does not eliminate manual cleaning, and the wash system itself needs its nozzles, detergent supply and cycle checked. The duct and fan downstream are unaffected by the wash and still load normally. A water-wash hood is a maintenance advantage, not an exemption.
The hood is over a solid fuel grill. Is anything different?
Yes. Solid fuel cooking produces creosote and airborne embers as well as grease, loads the system considerably faster, and in a properly built installation is served by its own dedicated exhaust rather than sharing with gas appliances. Solid fuel kitchens generally need a shorter interval than anything else in a North York plaza, and the walk-through will say so.
Can you install a new hood or modify the one we have?
No. Hood installation, modification, ductwork and fan work are all outside what Elite Hood Cleaning North York performs. Where the walk-through finds an undersized hood, insufficient overhang or a missing access panel, it is documented with photographs so a sheet metal or mechanical contractor can quote from evidence.