What Decides the Price of a Commercial Kitchen Exhaust Clean in Singapore

You ask two companies to quote for cleaning the same kitchen exhaust, and the numbers come back far apart. The cheaper one is not necessarily a bargain and the dearer one is not necessarily padding. In most cases the two quotes are pricing different jobs, and nothing on the page tells you so.

We do not publish a price list for exhaust cleaning on this site, and we would rather say why than hand you a figure that will be wrong for your kitchen. The scope and the pricing follow an inspection, and we quote clearly before the work starts. What we can do here is set out what decides the number, so that you can read any quote, ours included, and see what it is actually buying.

First, what a clean is made of

A commercial kitchen exhaust clean is not one task. Our servicing checklist lists ten things a proper service must cover: hood interior and exterior degreased, baffle filters removed and degreased, the accessible ductwork degreased internally, the exhaust fan opened and degreased, the fan mechanicals checked, the motor and electrical connections inspected, the control panel and starter tested, airflow and capture verified at the hood, the make-up air grilles cleaned and checked, and before-and-after photographs with a service report.

Some of those lines can be seen from the kitchen floor the next morning. Others cannot: whether the fan was actually opened, whether the make-up air grilles were touched, whether anyone checked airflow at the hood afterwards. When two quotes differ, the gap very often sits in the lines you cannot see. So the first step in comparing is to put the ten lines next to each quote and mark which ones each of them includes.

1. How many hoods, fans and duct runs there are

A single hood on a single fan is one job. A kitchen with a wok line, a fryer station and a separate dish room extraction may have several hoods, each with its own duct and fan, and every one of them has to be opened, degreased and checked. More hoods means more filters to take out, more duct to work through and more fans to open, so the work scales with the number of runs, not with the floor area.

That is why a floor area, or a seat count, tells a contractor very little. A list of hoods, what sits under each and where each fan is located tells them most of what they need.

2. How much of the duct can actually be reached

Our checklist says it plainly: if the duct is not opened, it is not cleaned. The duct interior is where grease accumulates and where a fire travels, and a crew can only degrease the sections it can get to. Access panels along the duct decide how much of the run is open to work.

This matters for price in two ways. A duct with doors in the right places is quicker to work through. A duct with few or none means a section may be reported as not accessible, which is a cost that has been deferred rather than removed, and it can come back as an unexplained gap in the report. If your last report names a section it could not reach, ask what it would take to reach it. We go through where the doors need to be, and how to audit your own, in access panels on a kitchen exhaust duct.

3. How much grease there is to remove

This is the part that follows what you cook and how long it has been since the last clean. On our cleaning frequency page we say most commercial kitchens need cleaning every one to three months: heavy wok, grill and deep-frying kitchens often need monthly cleaning, and lighter kitchens can run quarterly. We inspect the system and your cooking volume before recommending an interval rather than applying a fixed rule.

The link to the quote is direct. A heavily soiled system can need a longer window, and a quote written for a lightly loaded kitchen will not fit one that has gone a long time between cleans. It also means that stretching the interval to save money can be a false economy: each clean gets heavier, and the first clean after a long gap is closer to a survey than a routine visit. Grease on the hood you can see from the front is not a reliable guide to the duct behind it, which is why a quote written without anyone looking inside is a guess.

4. Where the fan is, and who controls the way to it

The fan may be on a roof, in a shared riser, in a plant room, or in the ceiling void of the unit itself. Each of those comes with its own questions: who holds the key, whether the landlord or building management needs notice, whether a lift or a ladder is involved, and what hours access is allowed. A unit in a mall, or one that shares a riser with other tenants, often has house rules that you will need to check with the landlord. Our post on shared risers and landlord rules for a mall F&B unit covers what to ask.

If you do not know where your fan is, say so when you ask for a quote.

5. The hours you can give

We routinely schedule cleaning overnight or in closed periods so the kitchen is ready to operate at opening. A typical single-kitchen clean takes a few hours; larger or heavily soiled systems may need longer, and we confirm timing after inspecting the setup. Tell any contractor the hours the kitchen is actually closed, because a short window can change how the job has to be staffed or whether it should be split across more than one visit. What to prepare and check on the night of a clean goes through the practical side.

6. What happens if a fault turns up

A clean opens the fan, the duct and the panels, so it sometimes finds something: a worn bearing, a loose connection, a motor drawing more current than it should. That is a separate matter from the clean, and it is worth asking how a quote treats it. Because we keep motors, fans, fan parts and control components in stock, we can often repair or replace a faulty part on the spot rather than booking a second visit, and we say “often”, not “always”, because some faults need a proper look first.

What to look for in any quote is whether it says who approves extra work, how you will be told, and that the options and the cost come before the work. We cover the three possible outcomes in a fault found during an exhaust clean.

7. What you get on paper afterwards

Every clean we do comes with dated before-and-after photographs and a service record you can show NEA, SCDF, your landlord or your auditor. For an inspection, a dated record is what counts; a verbal assurance is not evidence. Check that any quote you are comparing says what record you receive.

What does not move the number much

Two things people expect to matter usually matter less than they think. One is the size or the seat count of the restaurant: a small stall with a heavy wok line can put more grease into its duct than a larger dining room doing mostly oven work. The other is how tidy the kitchen looks. A spotless front of house tells you nothing about the state of the fan or the duct behind the ceiling.

Comparing two quotes honestly

Put both in front of you and ask the same six questions of each:

1. Which of the ten checklist items are included? In particular: is the fan opened, are the make-up air grilles cleaned, and is airflow checked at the hood afterwards?
2. How many hoods, fans and duct runs does it cover? Does that match what you actually have?
3. What happens to any section that cannot be reached? Is it named in the report?
4. What time does the crew arrive and when will the kitchen be ready? Is the window one you can actually give?
5. What happens if a fault is found? Who approves, and does the cost come before the work?
6. What record do you receive? Dated before-and-after photographs and a service record, or nothing in writing?

If one quote cannot answer these, you are comparing a number against an unknown. If you are thinking of moving from your current cleaner, changing your kitchen exhaust cleaning contractor sets out how to use the first clean as a baseline for the whole system.

Why we will not give a flat price

We could name a number. It would have to be wide enough to be safe for every kitchen we have not seen, which makes it useless to the one you have. A figure over the phone also invites the wrong comparison: if someone else quotes lower on the same call, the difference is almost always in what was assumed. So we inspect, we agree the scope with you, and we quote clearly before the work starts. Our crews are in-house, not subcontracted, and on 24/7 standby.

What to have ready when you ask

• What you cook: wok, fryer, grill, oven, charcoal or other.
• How many hoods you have and what sits under each.
• Where the exhaust fan is: roof, riser, plant room, or not sure.
• When the system was last cleaned, and whether the report had photos.
• Whether the ductwork has access panels along its length.
• The hours the kitchen can be closed.
• Any landlord, building or inspection requirement you have to meet.

With those answers, the quote stops being a guess, and the comparison with anyone else becomes a fair one.

The short version

Count the hoods and fans, find out how much duct can be reached, be honest about what you cook and when it was last cleaned, know where your fan is, and tell the contractor the hours you can give. Then compare quotes line by line against the ten checklist items rather than by the number at the bottom.

Want a clean quoted properly? WhatsApp BC Air on 8989 2833 with what you cook, how many hoods you have and when the kitchen is closed. Our kitchen exhaust cleaning page sets out what the work includes, and scope and pricing follow an inspection.

Related reading: how to compare kitchen ventilation quotations · how often a commercial kitchen exhaust should be cleaned · maintenance programs