The most actionable part of NFPA 96 is a table: how often your exhaust system must be inspected and cleaned, based on how much grease your cooking produces. Get the tier right and the rest of compliance is scheduling. Get it wrong and the sticker on your hood says so to anyone who reads it.
We’re a local referral service for commercial kitchens. Call or send the form and we’ll connect you with a trained, insured kitchen exhaust cleaning company serving Lexington — one that cleans the full system to NFPA 96 and leaves you the documentation your fire inspector and insurer expect. No charge for the referral.
Wood-fired ovens, charcoal grills, smokers venting through the exhaust system. Solid fuel produces creosote and heavy particulate on top of grease; the standard puts these systems on the shortest leash.
24-hour operations, charbroiling, wok cooking, heavy fryer use. Most high-throughput restaurants, sports bars with big fryer banks, and anything charbroiling all day lands here.
The typical sit-down restaurant with normal service hours and a mixed menu. This is the most common tier — and the most common tier to be wrongly self-assigned by kitchens that actually belong in quarterly.
Churches, day camps, seasonal operations, senior centers, kitchens that cook occasionally or lightly. Once a year, and before reopening after a seasonal shutdown.
The intervals are minimums. If an inspection — yours, the cleaner’s, or the fire inspector’s — finds grease accumulation beyond acceptable depth before the next scheduled cleaning, the system needs cleaning then, and your tier effectively moves up. Trained cleaners measure grease depth with a gauge rather than eyeballing it.
Do you cook with wood or charcoal? Monthly. Are you open around the clock, charbroiling, or running woks or a heavy fryer line? Quarterly. Normal hours, mixed menu? Semi-annually — but be honest about fryer volume. Occasional or light cooking? Annually. Not sure? That’s a legitimate answer, and the right cleaner will assess your tier on the first visit — choose “Not sure — need a tier assessment” on the form.
After every cleaning, a compliant company leaves a dated service sticker on the hood and a signed report on your premises. The fire inspector reads the date against your tier: a semi-annual kitchen with a nine-month-old sticker has a problem before anyone looks inside a duct. Inspection prep here.
We’re a local referral service for commercial kitchens. Call or send the form and we’ll connect you with a trained, insured kitchen exhaust cleaning company serving Lexington — one that cleans the full system to NFPA 96 and leaves you the documentation your fire inspector and insurer expect. No charge for the referral.
Lexington Hood Cleaning — Connecting Lexington restaurants and commercial kitchens with trained, insured kitchen exhaust cleaning companies.
Serving Lexington, Nicholasville, Georgetown, Versailles, Winchester, Richmond, Frankfort, and Central Kentucky.
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Information on this site is general guidance on NFPA 96 and commercial kitchen exhaust maintenance, not a compliance determination for your specific kitchen — your local fire authority makes that call. Lexington Hood Cleaning is a referral service and does not itself perform exhaust cleaning, inspection, or certification.