Nobody can argue with a range hood inspection that has no written standard. Two people look at the same hood and one says it is clean while the other says it needs another pass, and the argument costs time, labour and a scheduling slot you did not plan for. Fixing that means defining what "clean" means for each part of the hood, checking it the same way every time, and keeping a record that shows when each part was last inspected and what was found.
Break the hood into the parts you can actually judge
A hood is not one surface. Inspect and record it as separate items, because each one collects grease differently and each one fails differently:
- Filter panels and baffles — the highest-load items, and the ones that decide whether the rest of the system is doing anything.
- Hood interior faces and canopy panels — the surfaces directly above the cooking line.
- Lip, edges and grease cups — where people look first and where drips start.
- Fan housing and the accessible duct opening — where a hidden build-up quietly reduces airflow.
- The area underneath — cooking equipment tops, shields and anything in the splash zone.
Write a standard for each item before you inspect
The standard has to be observable, not subjective. A workable version, which you should adapt to your own operation and to whatever your local fire and food-safety requirements say:
- Pass: bare metal visible across the face, no soft grease film when wiped with a white cloth, edges and corners free of build-up, and airflow at the hood normal.
- Re-clean: patches of deposit remain, a cloth picks up grease on more than one wipe, or corners and joints still hold residue.
- Escalate: hardened deposit that does not respond to your normal cleaning method, damage to a panel or filter, or grease found beyond the hood in the duct opening.
Inspect with a method, not with a glance
Work in a fixed order — filters first, then hood interior, then lip and grease cups, then fan housing and duct opening, then the area underneath — and use the same three checks each time: look at the face on a raking light, which reveals a grease film that a head-on look misses; wipe with a clean white cloth at the joints, corners and behind the lip; and confirm extraction is still pulling properly once everything is back together. Inspect before the area is dried and put back, because reassembling hides the evidence.
The cleaning method itself shapes what you find at inspection. For range hood steam cleaning, high-temperature steam softens set grease so a filter or hood panel can be finished in one controlled pass instead of repeated scraping. A fixed machine such as the PowerDe HW02 delivers 160°C steam at 0.8 MPa from an 80 L SUS304 tank with a dry/wet steam switch, and PowerDe also supplies hand-pushed and mobile units for sites without a fixed wash bay. Whichever unit you use, set the technique on the first few jobs and record it, because inconsistent cleaning produces inconsistent inspection results and that looks like a training problem when it is really a process problem.
Record it on one line per item
Keep the record short enough that staff actually complete it. One row per item, per inspection, with these columns:
- Date, site and the person who did the cleaning.
- Item inspected (filter set, hood interior, lip and cups, fan and duct opening, area below).
- Result: pass, re-clean, or escalate.
- Method used and the machine and steam mode, so results can be compared.
- Action taken, and the follow-up date if anything was escalated.
- A photograph of any item recorded as re-clean or escalate.
Store the log where it can be pulled up in a minute, not in a folder nobody opens. Insurers, franchisors and inspectors ask for evidence of a routine, not for a single good day.
Use the record to change the schedule
The log is worth keeping only if you read it. Review it monthly and look for three patterns: items that repeatedly come back as re-clean, which means the interval is too long or the method is not working; a site or shift that scores differently from the others, which points at technique or staffing rather than equipment; and a sudden change in how fast filters load, which often traces back to a menu change, a new fryer, or an extraction fan losing performance.
Then adjust the interval, retrain the specific habit, or raise a maintenance request — and note the change in the log so the next review can tell whether it worked. If the pattern says your equipment is the limit rather than the process, PowerDe's engineering team takes on customised steam cleaning equipment for layouts and volumes a standard machine does not fit, and the inspection log you already keep is exactly the evidence to send them.
