False Advertising?? Questions to ask your Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning company if they make these claims!

These were actual statements posted on a web site by a kitchen exhaust cleaning company

Cleaning and inspection vendor qualifications that were listed:                             FACT: These qualitfications listed below ARE ACTUALLY NOT QUALIFICATIONS!!  Ther are in fact outright LIES!

1. We are in good standing with the International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaners Association These guys have never been associated, been a member, or ever been certified by IKECA!! This is a classic trying to claim something that they clearly are not!!. Make they show you their IKECA's letter of good standing or membership papers, or certification cards!! 
2. ******* has trained specialist with IKECA training                                                                          There is NO SUCH THING as IKECA training. IKECA is a tax exempt industry trade group and independent certification body only. They do NOT train cleaners or cleaning companies. IKECA certainly could never trained anyone at this company. Make them show you the training certification (which cannot exist)  
3. We have a close working relationship with local Fire Departments and Fire Inspectors Everybody has a close working relationship with the local inspectors as it is required in most cities. Some companies have too close of a relationship in a bad way when failing jobs. Make sure that is not the case with your kitchen exhaust cleaning company!!  

SW Foodservice Show

Hope to see everyone at the Southwest Foodservice Show this weekend. We will be in Booth 441. There will be a drawing for a waterproof/Shockproof Olympus Digital camera for doing grease exhaust inspections or for whatever else you like to take pictures of. We will also have plenty of Viro Blue pens for all and a couple of monopods to hand out. In addition, a full size Viroguard will be in the booth. Don Pfleiderer and Andrew Watson will be manning the booth with visits from the local Dallas crews during the weekend. Please stop by to say hi and sign up for the drawing. The show runs Sunday and Monday June 24-25th from 10:30AM to 5:00PM each day.

California June 20th Seminar

Thanks you to all the area fire inspectors attending the exhaust system seminar in Oceanside, California Wednesday. What a nice area and at least 20 degrees cooler than what I left in Mpls and what I will see this weekend in Dallas, TX. Oceanside is located on the Pacific coast between San Diego and Los Angelus for those not familiar with the area. Also in attendance was a KEC vendor from the Palm Springs area looking into joining IKECA. He has been in the KEC business in both Colorado and now Southern California for over 10 years now. From my discussions with him, his company would be a welcome addition to our organization. 

In March of 2012, We welcomed our Texas Area manager in charge of the Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas areas. He brings aboard vast Restaurant management and construction experience and fits our vision of unequaled quality in customer service and grease exhaust cleaning.  Please feel free to contact him with your exhaust system needs. You may contact Andrew through our toll free line, 800-325-8476. Andrew will be headquartered out of our regional office in Houston. Also, with the January opening of our new offices in Ocala Florida with our Florida area supervisor Jerry Oliver , Greg Smith has been promoted to Southeastern Regional Supervisor. He is headquartered out of our Atlanta Regional office. Greg is in charge of the SE United States. This area includes Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Congratulation to Joe Houston, Colorado supervisor working out of our Denver shop. In addition to his CECS credentials from IKECA. He is now a CESI (certified inspector).

Upcoming Grease exhaust Inspection/DesignSeminars

*Thursday, May 17th , 2012
9am to 3pm
Polish Community Center
225 Washington Avenue Ext.
Albany, NY  12205

*Friday, May 18th, 2012
9am to 3pm
Capitol Plaza
100 State Street
Montpelier, VT  05602
People can register by calling 518-793-9274 or emailing Kathleen@paintersandcleaners.com.

* Wednesday June 20, 2012
9:00AM- Noon
Fire Inspection Seminar for Souther CA Code officials
330 N Coast Hwy, Oceanside, CA




*Friday Jan 17, 2013
State of Utah Winter Fire School-2013
Dixie Convention Center
St George, Utah
Contact: Oliver Moore, Utah Deputy State Fire Marshal, omoore@utah.gov

Course outline(6 hour course, shorter courses will be 1st half only):

Kitchen Grease Exhaust Vent Systems: Proper

installation, maintenance, and inspection.

PART 1 Maintenance and inspections (60 Minutes)

1) Cause and effect: Grease buildup causes and effects.

a) What is all this buildup in the ductwork and what to do about it

b) What quality is for grease exhaust cleaning.

c) NFPA and how ASNI standards work

d) IKECA

e) Pictures and articles on fires that resulted from inadequate cleanings.

f) Grease Fire statistics.

2) Quick look at Standard cleaning

a) Setup

b) Cleaning in progress

c) Before and after pictures of extreme buildups

d) Proper Documentations and pictures

e) Proper cleanup

f) Hood and access stickers (documentation)

3) Inspections and examples

a) NFPA96 Standards- new 2011 changes

b) Insurance regulations

c) Permit programs

d) Looking into the systems. Why inaccessible areas cannot be allowed.

e) Measuring the grease and the grease comb

f) Checking hidden areas outside the duct

g) Checking rooftop areas and fans

h) Several examples of hidden areas found by proper inspection showing

inadequate cleanings (all examples were just completed work)

4) National Inspection program proper inspection technics

a) What is the National inspection program and how you can use the concepts?

b) Example of a typical job that passes inspections

c) Examples of jobs that failed inspection with pictures showing why.

d) How the database picture inspection program works with example work

orders and pictures and picture/inspection guidelines.

e) Examples of areas of concern outside the duct covered by the

inspection program including leaking ductwork above hoods

f) How to use and integrate lessons from the National Inspection program into

your own program or scope of work

BREAK- 15 minutes

PART 2 Construction, design, and new Technologies (60 minutes)

1) Type of systems

a) Type 1 systems

b) Proper water leak testing

c) Examples of Non-compliant sealant use on ductwork

c) Type 2 systems- Why they should never be used for grease exhaust

d) Extreme buildup in Type 2 systems

2) Recommended equipment and design guidelines

a) Proper access plate layouts

b) Option for fan hinges on side wall fans

c) The virtual box method for access plates

d) Proper and improper types of access plates

e) Blocked access plates

3) Hoods

a) Water wash style hoods

b) Hood and back wall gaps and effects

c) Hood efficiencies

d) New technologies

4) Fans

a) Types of fans

b) Proper hinges and upblast fan layouts

c) Upblast fan clean out port requirement – updated 2011 NFPA96

d) Safe roof access to fans – updated 2011 NFPA96

e) Rooftop grease and grease containment concepts, units, and examples

f) Environmental units and New technologies including Electronic Precipitator

example, UV filtration systems, high efficiency hood filters, etc.

f) EPA Regulations: Where does all that cleaning solution and grease go?

PART 3: FINAL SUMMARY PAGE/ Q & A session (2-10 minutes)

Don's Bio:

With over 38 years of

experience in the Exhaust System Field

(1974), Don Pfleiderer is the current

president of Enviromatic Corporation. His

accomplishments include various product

patents and many innovative programs for

grease exhaust systems. He is head of a

renowned Envirospection® National

Inspection Program for kitchen grease exhaust systems for some of

North America's largest restaurant chains. He is also an IKECA

certified grease exhaust vent system cleaner (CESC #7308-09, exp

2/15/2013) and inspector (CESI #1001045, exp. 2/15/2014) and a

member of the IKECA - ANSI standards consensus body for kitchen

exhaust systems. Mr. Pfleiderer has done numerous presentations for

the past fifteen years for various Fire, Health, and Building

Departments!(as well as restaurant and building trade groups)

throughout Minnesota, Nebraska, Florida, New York, Massachusetts,

Ohio, Kansas, Texas, Wisconsin, California, Vermont, Utah, Ontario, 

and various other locations in the United States and Canada.

Recently, Mr. Pfleiderer has also been performing and setting

up presentations, training programs, inspections, and grease exhaust

maintenance programs for various nationals restaurant insurance

companies including Nationwide/ Allied insurance, Illinois Casualty

Insurance, and others. Mr. Pfleiderer annually conducts the

Minnesota Building Code Official's certification training for the

University of Minnesota, the State of New York accredited training at

the University of Albany, the Massachusetts!s training at Holyoke,

and just completed performing the inspector/ AHJ training at the 2011

IKECA technical seminar in Milwaukee. He has served or currently

serves on education and/or ethic committees for the Minnesota

Hospitality Association, IKECA, RFMA, and others. Mr. Pfleiderer has

also been a frequent contributing technical writer for the Restaurant

Facilities Business Magazine, Facilitator magazine, and the IKECA

Journal.

Picture programs

LOOKING INTO THE HORIZONTAL WE SEE THAT

THE KEC HAS BEEN AVOIDING PICTURES OF THIS AREA

THIS JOB HAD BEEN PASSING AS THE

AJH HAD NO IDEA ABOUT THIS DUCT RUN.

BASELINE PICTURES WOULD HAVE

PREVENTED THIS. 

AN OTHER JOB WITH A GAYLORD HOOD,

THIS WAS JUST CLEANED BY A NATIONAL VENDOR,

 THE INSPECTOR WAS NOT GIVEN PICTURES OF

THIS AREA. HE DID CATCH IT AND FAILED

THE JOB DUE TO LACK OF PICTURES. HE 

WAS SHOCKED AT THE CONDITION LEFT. 

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 cleaner 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