Commercial Kitchen Hood Cleaning in Dubai
Commercial kitchen hood cleaning across Dubai: hoods, canopies, filters, grease ducts and extract fans. We work in restaurants, cloud kitchens, hotel and club kitchens, staff canteens, cafeterias and catering production units. This is a commercial service, not a domestic one, and the scope is the whole extract path from the canopy lip to the point where the air leaves the building. Written scope, dated handover record, 6-month workmanship warranty.
What a kitchen hood clean actually covers
Kitchen hood cleaning, kitchen exhaust cleaning and canopy cleaning all describe the same job when it is done properly: the whole extract path, not the visible stainless. Restaurant hood cleaning in a busy grill kitchen and a hotel kitchen deep clean differ in grease load and in when we can get access, not in what has to be reached.
A full commercial kitchen hood cleaning job on our scope sheet runs end to end. We survey the kitchen first, because the answer to what a clean costs and how long it takes depends almost entirely on what we find behind the filters and how the duct is built. Once the scope is agreed, the work covers the following.
Most kitchens that believe they are having a hood cleaning service are only having the baffle filters washed. The filters are the easy part. The grease that keeps a fire inspector interested sits in the plenum behind the filters, in the vertical riser, along every horizontal duct run and inside the extract fan housing. A kitchen can have spotless filters and a duct lined with a soft, warm deposit that will carry flame.
Canopy interior, exterior and grease removal devices
The canopy is degreased inside and out, including the underside, the lighting surrounds and the grease gutter and collection cup at the low point. Baffle filters and mesh filters are removed, soaked and washed rather than wiped in place, then dried and refitted the right way round. A baffle filter fitted upside down stops draining into the gutter and starts dripping onto the range. If filters are buckled, missing a handle or so corroded that the baffles no longer sit tight, we tell you and quote replacements rather than refit something that will not do its job.
The plenum behind the filters
The plenum is the chamber immediately behind the filter bank. It is the first place velocity drops and grease drops out with it, and it is the part most often skipped because you have to take the filters out and get a hand and a light in there to see it. We clean the plenum on every job. It is also where we can see the condition of the fire suppression nozzles and pipework, and if we find a nozzle capped, missing or covered in hardened grease, we photograph it and tell you, because that is your suppression contractor work and not ours.
The riser and the horizontal grease duct
From the plenum, the duct is cleaned through its accessible length: the vertical riser, every horizontal run, every bend and every transition. This is done through access panels, working section by section, with the grease scraped and washed rather than smeared further along the run. Bends and horizontal sections at low fall are the parts that load fastest, so they get checked twice.
Extract fan, impeller and roof discharge
The extract fan is isolated electrically before anyone touches it. The housing, the impeller blades and the fan kerb are cleaned, because a coated impeller is heavier and out of balance, moves less air, and drags the whole kitchen extraction rate down long before anyone reports a fault. Belt condition, tension and pulley alignment are checked on belt-driven units and reported. We also clean the discharge point at roof level and check that grease is being collected there rather than run down the roof membrane, which is a repair bill nobody budgets for.
Make-up air and pressure balance
Extract only works if the same volume of air can get back into the kitchen. Where the make-up air supply is fouled, blocked or simply switched off, the kitchen goes negative against the rest of the building. The symptoms are recognisable: entrance doors that are heavy to pull, whistling at door edges, smoke rolling out of the canopy lip instead of up into it, and cooking smells arriving in the dining room, the corridor or the neighbouring unit. We clean the make-up air path where it forms part of the kitchen system and flag pressure imbalance in the report, with what would fix it.
Access panels, and what we do when there are none
A duct can only be cleaned properly where it can be opened. Access panels should sit at every change of direction, either side of a fire damper, at the base of the riser and at intervals along long horizontal runs. Plenty of Dubai kitchens have a duct that was built as a sealed box with none at all, or panels that were later plastered, tiled or boxed in by a fit-out contractor who did not know what they were covering.
When we find that, we say so plainly and quote for cutting and fitting proper hinged and gasketted access panels. We do not pretend a run has been cleaned when the only thing that reached it was a brush on a pole pushed in blind from one end. Fitting panels is a one-off cost that makes every future clean quicker, cheaper and provable, and it is the single change that does most for the standard of a kitchen ongoing maintenance. Where panels genuinely cannot be fitted, for example a fully concealed run through another tenant demise, we write that section down as inaccessible on the report rather than leaving a gap you find out about during an inspection.
The record you get at handover
Every job finishes with a written record: date, kitchen and system identified, what was cleaned, before and after photographs of the canopy, plenum, duct sections and fan, any section recorded as inaccessible and why, defects found, and the recommended next service date based on what we actually saw. That record is what you hand to an inspector, an insurer or a food-safety auditor when they ask. It is also what tells you, six months later, whether your interval is right or whether the duct is loading faster than the calendar assumed.
Kitchen duct cleaning and AC duct cleaning are different jobs
These are two separate services with two different buyers, and they get confused constantly when a facilities manager asks a contractor for duct cleaning.
Air conditioning duct cleaning
Deals with supply and return ductwork carrying conditioned air. The contamination is dust, fibre, construction debris and biological growth in the moisture around coils and drain pans. The reason to do it is air quality and system efficiency. If that is what you need, it is covered on our AC duct cleaning page and it links through to indoor air quality work.
Grease duct cleaning
Deals with the kitchen extract path. The contamination is condensed cooking effluent, which is combustible. The reason to do it is fire risk and inspection compliance, and secondarily extraction performance and odour control. The access, the tooling, the waste handling and the working hours are all different. A contractor who cleans AC ducts well is not automatically equipped to clean a grease riser, and the deposit in a grease duct will not come out with the methods used on a supply duct.
Some sites need both. A restaurant has a grease extract system over the range and an air conditioning system serving the dining room, and they have nothing to do with each other. If you want both quoted, ask for both and we will survey both. For everything else on the ducting side, whether that is ductwork, duct installation, duct manufacturing, duct modification or duct insulation, those are separate scopes with their own pages.
What decides how often your kitchen needs cleaning
There is no single interval that fits every kitchen, and any contractor quoting you one without looking at your extract first is guessing. Four things drive it.
Cooking volume
Hours of production, covers per service and how many pieces of equipment sit under the canopy. A single unit serving lunch five days a week loads a duct nowhere near as fast as a kitchen running from breakfast to after midnight.
Cooking type
This is the big one and it is routinely underestimated. A shawarma grill, a charcoal or wood setup, a wok range or an open flame griddle throws far more airborne fat into the duct than a bakery, a salad kitchen or a steam and boil production line. Two kitchens with identical hours can need cleaning at completely different intervals purely because of what is on the range.
Hours of operation
Twenty-four-hour kitchens and kitchens that run through a second dinner service accumulate grease around the clock.
Extract design
Duct length, the number of bends, run velocity, low points where grease pools, and whether the canopy is correctly sized and positioned for the equipment underneath it. A poorly designed extract loads faster and will keep loading faster until the design is changed.
What the Dubai rules actually say
Most contractor websites in this market are vague about this, or they quote a rule that does not exist. Two Dubai documents govern it, and both are public.
The Dubai Food Code, section 2.11 Ventilation
States that ventilation systems should be sufficient in number and capacity to prevent grease or condensation from collecting on the walls and ceiling, that the filters or other grease extracting equipment are easily removable for cleaning and replacement if not designed to be cleaned in place, and that hood systems include components such as hoods, fans, guards, and ducting which will prevent grease or condensation from draining or dripping onto food. It also calls for make-up air systems, and for airflow to be directed from the clean area to the contaminated area. On cleaning it says only that ventilation systems should be cleaned in accordance with the requirements stipulated by the concerned department of Dubai Municipality. It sets no interval of its own.
Dubai Municipality Technical Guidelines for Occupational Health and Safety in Kitchens and Food Preparation Areas
Reference DM-HSD-GU46-KFPA2, version 3, issued 9 May 2024, published at dmpmedia.dm.gov.ae. This is the document that does set intervals, and they are shorter than most operators expect. Section 4-6 Fume Ventilation sets a daily clean of cooker surfaces and hoods, and emptying and cleaning of oil and condensation in the channels and collectors. It sets filter removal and cleaning at least once a week. It also calls for the inside surfaces of the ducting and the fan blades to be cleaned, with the fan switched off, allowed to cool, and the switch locked off or the fuse removed first.
What that means in practice
Read those together and the division of labour is clear. The daily and weekly work is the kitchen own housekeeping. The duct interior and the fan are the specialist clean, and neither Dubai document puts a calendar interval on that one. Anybody telling you Dubai Municipality mandates a quarterly duct clean is quoting something that is not in either document.
The same guideline carries two design points worth checking on your own kitchen, because they are common failures. The ducting should serve only the kitchen with no communication with the rest of the premises, which is a real problem in cloud kitchens and mall units sharing a riser. And the vertical stack should extend 1.5 m above the highest points in the building, which is the usual reason a discharge generates complaints from neighbours or the floors above.
How the interval is actually decided
Since no Dubai document sets a deep-clean frequency, the defensible way to set one is by measurement rather than by calendar. The international best-practice guidance used across this trade sets a grease deposit limit of 200 microns, 0.2 mm, as a mean across the system, and says cleaning frequency should be sufficient that the limit is never exceeded. A single point measuring 2,000 microns or more calls for urgent localised cleaning. After a clean, individual thickness tests should read no more than 50 microns, which is the number that tells you whether the work was actually done.
Those readings are taken with a grease thickness test: visual assessment where fouling is gross, a wet film thickness comb on softer deposits, a depth probe, or an electro-magnetic induction gauge. That is how an interval stops being a guess. We survey, record what we find, and set your interval from your own kitchen accumulation rate rather than from a number on a price list.
Internationally, NFPA 96 is the standard most often cited for commercial kitchen extract, and Dubai contractors quote it freely in their sales copy. We have not built your interval on it. It is a United States standard rather than a Dubai regulation, and what actually governs your premises is your licence conditions read together with the accumulation rate we measure in your own ducting.
Why owners choose Samra
Samra is a Dubai maintenance, fit-out and renovation contractor. We have been working in the emirate since 2015 and the business is women-owned. Kitchen extract sits alongside the ducting, electrical and mechanical work we already carry out for commercial clients, so a hood clean can be booked on its own or built into the wider maintenance you already run.
We clean the system, not the visible half
The scope above is what we quote and what we photograph. If a section cannot be reached, it goes on the report as inaccessible with a recommendation, rather than being quietly counted as done.
Cloud kitchens and shared extract risers
A cloud kitchen or a food hall is a specific problem. Several operators cook into a shared riser, and the grease loading in that riser is the sum of everyone cooking, not just yours. One tenant running a heavy grill can put the whole stack at risk while every other operator believes their own filters are clean. If you run a unit in a shared facility, ask the operator who is responsible for the riser and what evidence exists that it has been cleaned. If you run the facility, we can quote the shared riser and fan as a separate scope from the individual tenant canopies, so responsibility is clear and every party has a record.
Hotels, staff canteens and catering units
Hotel and club kitchens are usually the hardest to schedule and the easiest to under-clean, because the kitchen never fully closes and the extract is long, complex and shared between several cooking areas. Staff canteens and catering production units tend to be forgotten entirely until an audit asks for records. We work to whatever window you have, including overnight and closed days, and we phase the work by area so no part of the operation stops.
One contractor for the rest of the building
Samra works across commercial services in Dubai, so the same team that cleans your extract can handle electrical work, plumbing, handyman and repair work, commercial HVAC, cold room repair and commercial refrigeration. For restaurant operators, our restaurant services page covers the wider package. If something fails outside working hours, emergency services covers the callout.
Approvals, permits and working around service hours
Most hood cleaning jobs need access rather than approval, but access in Dubai commercial property has its own paperwork. Malls, hotels, towers and managed food halls typically require a permit to work, an approved contractor on file, insurance documents, staff passes and a defined working window, often overnight. We handle that submission with the building management on your behalf and work to whatever window they grant.
Permits and building management
Malls, hotels, towers and managed food halls typically require a permit to work, an approved contractor on file, insurance documents, staff passes and a defined working window. We handle that submission with the building management and work to the window they grant.
When cleaning becomes alteration
Where the job goes beyond cleaning and into altering the extract, for example cutting new access panels, replacing duct sections, re-siting a fan or changing the canopy, that becomes a works scope and may need approvals. Samra coordinates Dubai Municipality, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority and Dubai Civil Defence approvals as part of our fit-out and maintenance work, and we will tell you at survey stage whether your job needs any of them before we start rather than after.
Overnight and closed-day working
We work overnight, on closed days and around service hours as standard. Kitchen extract cleaning is wet, messy work with a lot of degreaser and a lot of covered surfaces, and doing it during service is bad for the food, bad for the kitchen and bad for the clean. Tell us your window when you enquire and we will build the programme around it.
How we price kitchen hood cleaning
We do not publish rates, because a canopy is not a unit of work. What we do is survey first and quote against what is actually there. Here is the method.
Survey
We come to the kitchen, take the filters out, look into the plenum, trace the duct route, find the access panels or establish that there are none, and inspect the fan and the discharge point. Where the duct is concealed we ask for drawings and, if there are none, we say so in the quote.
Scope sheet
You get a written scope listing every element to be cleaned, section by section, so there is no argument later about whether the riser was included.
Cost drivers
The main ones are the number and size of canopies, the length and complexity of the duct run, how much access already exists and how much has to be created, the current grease loading, the fan type and its position, whether the work is inside normal hours or overnight, and whether any permit or standby cover is needed. Filter replacements, new access panels and any duct repair are quoted as separate line items so you can see them clearly.
Quotation
Everything lands in a written quotation with a fixed price against a defined scope. If you work from a bill of quantities, send it and we will price against it line by line. If you do not have one, send photographs of the canopy and the ceiling void, tell us what is on the range and what hours you run, and we will tell you what we need to see before we can put a number on it.
Contracts
If you want the kitchen on a fixed programme rather than calling us each time, we can put it on an annual maintenance contract. The annual maintenance contract is an annual fee billed quarterly, with the visit frequency set from your kitchen actual loading. Details are on our commercial maintenance contracts and annual maintenance contract pages.
Workmanship and material warranties
Samra provides a six-month workmanship warranty on the work we carry out. Where the job includes materials or equipment, for example replacement baffle filters, access panels, duct sections or fan components, the manufacturer material warranty is passed through to you and the applicable term is confirmed in writing in the quotation before you accept it. We do not quote a warranty duration we cannot stand behind, and we do not invent one for a product we are supplying on your behalf.
Workmanship warranty
6-month workmanship warranty on the cleaning and any fitting work we carry out. If something we cleaned or fitted is not right, tell us and we will come back.
Single accountability line across cleaning, access panel fitting, filter replacement and any duct or fan work.
Material warranties
Manufacturer warranties on replacement baffle filters, access panels, duct sections and fan components pass through to you directly. The applicable term is confirmed in writing in the quotation before you accept it.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions Dubai kitchen operators ask before booking a hood clean.
Do you clean the whole system or just the filters?
The whole system, within the limits of what can be accessed. Canopy inside and out, grease gutter, filters, plenum, riser, horizontal duct runs, extract fan and impeller, and the roof discharge. Filter washing on its own is a cleaning task, not a hood clean, and we will not sell it to you as one.
How often does a Dubai commercial kitchen need this?
It depends on your cooking type, cooking volume, operating hours and extract design, and on what Dubai Municipality, Dubai Civil Defence, your food-safety scheme and your insurer require for your specific premises. We recommend an interval after the survey and adjust it based on what each clean actually finds.
Can you work overnight so we do not have to close?
Yes. Overnight and closed-day working is standard for this service. We phase larger kitchens by area so production keeps running.
Our duct has no access panels. What happens?
We quote for cutting and fitting hinged, gasketted access panels at the points where they are needed. It is a one-off cost that makes every future clean faster and verifiable. Without them, parts of the run cannot be cleaned or inspected, and we will record those sections as inaccessible rather than claim otherwise.
Is this the same as AC duct cleaning?
No. Grease extract and air conditioning ductwork are different systems, different contamination and different methods. See AC duct cleaning if that is what you need. Many sites need both, quoted separately.
Do you clean the extract fan and the roof discharge?
Yes, both. The fan housing and impeller are cleaned with the unit electrically isolated, belts and alignment are checked and reported, and the discharge point at roof level is cleaned and checked for grease running onto the roof.
Areas we cover
Same-day reach across Dubai. Tap your area for landmarks, communities and the services we deliver there — or tell us your building on WhatsApp.
Send us the details
WhatsApp the site name, location, what is on the range and the hours you run. We arrange a survey, take the filters out, look into the plenum, trace the duct route and inspect the fan and discharge, then issue a fixed-price written scope. Overnight and closed-day working is standard.
