Commercial · Duluth, Superior & 45 miles around
Commercial Kitchen Ventilation & Exhaust Hoods — Twin Ports
Our hood is not pulling properly or we have a ventilation inspection issue.
$89 diagnostic, credited toward the repair when you approve the work. Answered 24/7.
Short answer
Who services commercial kitchen hoods and exhaust in Duluth and Superior?
Kitchen exhaust is a fire-safety system as much as a comfort one. Hood capture, exhaust fan condition, duct integrity and balance with make-up air all have to work together. We service the mechanical side — hoods, fans, ducts, controls and balance — and coordinate with your hood-cleaning and fire-suppression vendors.
Capture and containment is the performance standard
A hood's job is to capture the plume from the cooking equipment and contain it until it is exhausted. If it does not, you get smoke in the kitchen, grease on the surfaces, odour in the dining room, and a fire-safety problem because grease is going somewhere other than the filters.
Capture failures usually trace to one of a handful of causes: the hood is too small or wrongly positioned for the equipment beneath it, the exhaust fan is not moving its design airflow (worn belt, wrong rotation, failing motor, or a fan simply undersized for the duct run), the filters are loaded, or the building is so negative from a make-up air problem that the hood cannot pull.
So we measure rather than assume. Airflow at the hood, fan performance, static in the duct, and the pressure relationship of the kitchen to the rest of the building. Cookline changes are a frequent culprit — a kitchen that swapped in a char-broiler under a hood designed for a fryer line has a hood that is now undersized for the duty, and no amount of fan service fixes that.
We also look at the interaction with the dining room. Getting the kitchen slightly negative relative to the dining room keeps odours where they belong; getting it strongly negative relative to outdoors causes every problem in our make-up air page.
The fire-safety boundary, and who does what
Kitchen ventilation sits inside a fire-safety system, and it is worth being clear about the division of labour, because operators are often confused about it — usually by vendors who are vague on purpose.
Grease duct cleaning on the required schedule is performed by certified hood-cleaning contractors who document coverage from the hood to the fan. Fire-suppression systems over the cookline are installed, inspected and certified by licensed fire-protection contractors. Both are specialised trades with their own credentials and inspection regimes.
What we do is the mechanical system: hood and duct integrity, exhaust fan service and replacement, controls and interlocks, make-up air, and the balance that makes the whole thing work. We coordinate with your cleaning and suppression vendors, and if we find a grease accumulation or a suppression concern during service we tell you and document it rather than quietly working around it.
If you are not sure whether your cleaning schedule matches your cooking volume, ask — the required frequency depends on what and how much you cook, and solid-fuel or high-volume frying operations need it far more often than a light-duty kitchen.
When to call us
- Smoke or steam escaping the hood at the cookline
- Grease accumulating on kitchen surfaces or ceiling near the hood
- Cooking odours in the dining room or neighbouring tenancies
- The exhaust fan is noisy, vibrating, or visibly slowing
- Grease dripping from the hood, duct joints or the fan on the roof
- You changed the cookline without changing the hood
- A fire or health inspection has raised a ventilation finding
- Doors hard to open when the kitchen runs (a make-up air balance problem)
What kitchen ventilation costs in the Twin Ports
Quoted per project
Hourly plus parts for service. New or modified hood and exhaust systems are quoted per project. Note that scheduled grease-duct cleaning and fire-suppression certification are separate specialised trades with their own certifications — we work alongside those vendors rather than replacing them.
Ranges are typical installed costs in the Twin Ports area, not quotes. We give you a firm price in writing before any work starts.
Commercial Kitchen Ventilation — questions we get asked
Do you clean kitchen exhaust hoods?
Grease-duct cleaning on the code schedule is a separate certified trade, and we work alongside those vendors rather than replacing them. We handle the mechanical side — hoods, fans, ducts, controls, interlocks and balance — and we will tell you if we see a cleaning or suppression problem during service.
Why is smoke escaping from under our hood?
Either the hood cannot capture the plume — too small or wrongly positioned for the equipment under it, often after a cookline change — or the exhaust fan is underperforming, or the building is too negative from a make-up air fault to let the hood pull. We measure all three, because the fixes are very different.
How often does a kitchen exhaust system need service?
The mechanical side benefits from semi-annual service on fans, belts, bearings and controls, with balance verified annually. Grease-duct cleaning frequency is set by code according to your cooking volume and fuel type — a solid-fuel or high-volume fry operation needs it far more often than a light-duty kitchen.
We are opening a restaurant. Can you handle the ventilation design?
Yes — hood sizing for your actual cookline, exhaust and make-up air design, code review for the occupancy, and coordination with your suppression and cleaning contractors. Doing this at design stage is dramatically cheaper than correcting it after an inspection.
Where we do this work
The communities where this comes up most across our 66-town service area.
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Furnaces, boilers, air conditioning, cold-climate heat pumps and water heaters for homes across Duluth, Superior and 45 miles around — with 24/7 no-heat service.
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We answer 24 hours a day, every day of the year — Duluth, Superior and every town within 45 miles, in both states. $89 diagnostic, credited toward the repair when you approve the work.