Why big kitchens are different
A club or hotel kitchen doing several hundred covers a night is a different system to a cafe. Long or double-sided canopies over island cooking suites. Multiple fryers running all service. Charcoal grills. Ductwork that runs long distances through plant rooms to fans that may be three storeys up. And a grease load that can put a year's worth of cafe build-up into the system in a quarter.
Everything about the job scales with that: the time, the access, the volume of wastewater, and the consequence of getting the interval wrong.
The systems you find
- Island canopies. Double-sided hoods over a central suite, with filters both sides and a plenum that collects from both.
- Multiple canopies on one duct. Several hoods feeding a common run, which means one blocked section affects every station.
- Long duct runs. Through ceiling voids and plant rooms, with bends at every change of direction, each one a grease trap.
- Large rooftop fans. Sometimes several, sometimes in a plant room with its own access arrangements.
- Solid fuel. Charcoal or wood grills, which the standard treats separately because of ember risk.
Access and coordination
The job needs the kitchen cold and clear, roof or plant room access, isolation of the fan power, and usually a manager on site who can open things. In a licensed club that often means coordinating with the duty manager, the maintenance contractor and sometimes security. Sorting that out before the night is the difference between a job that runs and one that stalls at a locked door.
It is worth asking whether the venue has a maintenance register for the fire systems, because the exhaust clean should be recorded there alongside extinguisher and alarm servicing.
Staging
A large kitchen is often more than one night. Canopy and filters first, duct sections as access allows, fan last. Staging lets the kitchen keep trading and lets the contractor do each part properly rather than rushing a whole system into one shift.
The report should then be a single document covering the whole system with dates for each section, so the record is coherent when someone asks.
The insurance angle
Large venues carry large policies and insurers pay attention. Renewal questionnaires ask about exhaust maintenance, and after a fire the first request is for the cleaning records. A venue that can produce dated, photographed reports on a sensible interval is in a very different position to one that cannot.
What insurers actually ask for
Sunshine Coast specifics
The Coast's clubs and hotels do seasonal volume that compresses a lot of trading into short windows. The system loads accordingly. Rooftop fans on beachfront venues corrode fast, and fan inspection during the clean is often where a failing unit gets found. Book the heavy clean for the quiet period before summer.
Check the current requirements before you rely on this
This page describes kitchen exhaust cleaning standards and practice as they stood in September 2026. Standards are revised, and what applies to a particular venue depends on its equipment, its building, its council and its insurer.
AS 1851 is published by Standards Australia at standards.org.au. Food premises requirements in Queensland sit under the Food Act 2006 and are administered by your council, Sunshine Coast Council at sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au or Noosa Council at noosa.qld.gov.au. Building fire safety is administered by Queensland Fire Department. Where anything here differs from those sources, they are right and we are not.
We are not fire engineers, council officers or insurers. For what applies to your venue, speak to your council's environmental health team, your insurer or a fire safety adviser.