From Phil Ackland

Grant

Grant

Administrator
Gentlemen--We are going to give this "Ask the Guru" a try. Please understand that much of the information I have gathered over the years is the wisdom and experience of others. So some questions will likely be referenced out to get further or deeper insight.
Also I think, where applicable, I will try to find people in specific fields who may be able to provide their point of view. Such as asking Stan Suave his point of view on how the AHJ feels about something.
Grant Mogford and Ron Musgraves have assured us that this thread will stay focused on subject, not that a little humor from time to time isn't okay. But we will not be wasting anyones time with answering or reading irrelevant comments.
So, here it goes. If you have a relevant question in the realm of commercial kitchen exhaust systems we will do our best to answer it.
Many issues are debatgable. We will try to reason out, to the best of our ability and time, the background logic for some conclusions.

The first question I have for you is, What do you think is the primary issue holding back this field from having respect as a fire prevention service?

Phil Ackland
 
We are seen in the same light as auto mechanics, not many customers really know what we do and even fewer of them check to make sure that we are doing the job right. This puts an incredible burden on the cleaner to self impose standards which may or may not be acceptable to an AHJ. If we were in the limelight like HVAC technicians or plumbers, there would certainly be a standard to uphold in the quality of our work, but it is very easy for us to not do our jobs right simply because nobody is going to know if we didn’t.

How many calls has anyone ever gotten saying that “You didn’t clean my system to bare metal” I would guess close to none ( I actually got one of those but that is a different story for another day), but how many times have you gotten a call saying “You guys left a mess” I would say you can remember more than a few of those. So what happens is you focus on making sure that you make the guys kitchen look really clean so you won’t get woken up the next day when our actual job is make his exhaust system really clean.

To put it plainly, our customers are ignorant. 99% of them have no idea what we do and don’t care if their systems are cleaned to bare metal as long as their exhaust system is running, there is no mess in the kitchen and they have an invoice to show the insurance company that the system was “cleaned”. The customers need to be educated and they in turn will demand quality service from us.
 
Customer Ignorance

I agree, customer ignorance is the biggest issue.

My best guess is that 30 percent of the restaurants in my area do not get cleaned until a fire marshal threatens to shut them down. The owners simply don't think it is a necessary expense.
 
I think it is a combination of customer ignorance and AHJ (fire inspector) budget cuts and under staffing. Private AHJ (insurance inspectors) are actively on restaurant owners to get the work done properly.
 
If Phil was here he might want to say, "Don't get foam on the links. It's not nice." Matt's comment about hearing, "you guys left a mess." from a customer or two, struck me right where I sit. I met that same guy here and he said the same thing about some grease in the slop sink. Nobody's perfect just him! A new one lately, I said to a customer, the last guy who cleaned this system - didn't half do the job. He says, Funny that's what all the previous guys said. So I show him when we finish, he says, what'd you want me to do! Looks okay to me. KMA
 
Ignorance Issue

Sorry Guys, I was away for a week working on my other "labor of love."
One idea I had on the "Ignorance Issue" was trying to work together and create a greater awareness in the restaurant trade about the number of fires there are on the appliances and in the exhaust system.
Google has the search capacity to find "restaurant fires." Some of you know how to do this sort of search (I leave it to Tammy and Nick). Why don't we start accumulating the times that fires are involved on the appliances; compile them is some way and then feed them back to the restaurant industry?
This action will isolate and expose the problem that many probably take for granted.
Those of you who know how to do this search could help by explaining it to others. With your help we (my "Administrate Professionals") could catalog the Who's, What's and Where's of it all and see that it is available to you locally in some agreed format.
Please note this is an IDEA. There are probably bugs and adjustments that will need to be made. I am just opening a suggestion.
Your thoughts?
Phil
FYI I will be in Denver next week (April 30 to May 2) at the IAAI convention. If any of you are in the area look me up. I will be at the Show Administrative Booth. I will also be in Chicago for the NRA May 20 -- 23, at the Flame Gard Booth.
 
I've been saving those search returns ever since I found that feature. What is really scary is that there are at least 3 fires a day in restaurants, sometimes as many as 15!
 
Yes. We have been watching them for some time. I notice that if you don't save them properly the webpage stales. Also many really are not about appliance or exhaust fires. That is what we have to isolate and track. The other thing that would be neat is if we could get some sort of follow up on what happened weeks and months out after the fire. Did the place reopen, what was the cost, how many people were out of work for how long. In other words what was the "pain" experienced because of this exhaust fire? What other things should/could we accumulate as far as relevant information is concerned?
 
As for the web sites going stale, if someone were to view them, determine their relevence and save the web page locally on a hard drive or as a pdf, that would save them beyond the life of the newspapers archives. As for contacting the reporters, they know so little fact about what we are concerned with, they know what draws a readers eyes to an article, but beyond that, it is as the J. Giles Band put it "Dirty Laundry" it is much more reliable to contact the fire department that was involved to get the initial incident report and then (10 days - 2 weeks later) get the fire investigators report. typically there is no or very minimal charge for these reports.
 
There is a very large (geographically) group here, but coordinating and follow up would be a huge commitment.
 
Has this idea gone stale? It's been over a month and no new ideas.

Here is another fire, I wonder if their insurance will cover, since they had been warned by an AHJ several months ago. It would also be interesting to know if it had been "cleaned" after the warning.

http://ww2.wpri.com/Global/story.asp?S=4979139
 
The idea of following up more of these fires hasn't so much gone stale as sideways.
WE had one we wanted to post, but by the time we got around to it we couldn't find it again. Maybe some of you read it. I thought it was a hoot!
It was about a Chinese restaurant in a two-story restaurant in Vancouver BC (my old stomping grounds).
The fire was in the exhaust system but the good part was that when the fire department was putting it out on the second floor they came across a "grow-op" (our word up here for indoor marijuana growing operations -- of which there are hundreds in BC -- Anyone heard of "BC Bud?)
Anyway that struck me as funny. I was wondering if the FD took their oxygen masks off as they fought the fire? Was it considered an occupational hazard or a benefit?
We have another one that we got as a newspaper clipping and will post it a little later today.
 
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