How to Choose a Certified Kitchen Exhaust Cleaner in Alberta

Choosing a kitchen exhaust cleaner in Alberta comes down to verifying four things before anyone touches your hood: recognized training, real insurance, a bare-metal scope of work, and proper documentation. Anyone with a pressure washer can call themselves a hood cleaner — there is no provincial licence specific to this trade — so the burden of vetting falls on you, and the consequences of choosing badly land on your fire inspection and your insurance file.

The four checks

1. Training. Look for technicians trained through IKECA (the International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Association) or an equivalent recognized program. Training matters because NFPA 96 work is technique-heavy: duct access, chemical selection, fan disassembly, and knowing what bare metal actually requires.
2. Insurance. Ask for proof of commercial general liability coverage. An uninsured crew damaging your roof membrane or starting a fire during cleaning becomes your problem.
3. Scope. The quote must cover hood, filters, the full duct run through access panels, and the rooftop fan — cleaned to bare metal. If the duct or fan isn't itemized, assume it's being skipped. Our duct-versus-hood explainer shows why that's the expensive corner to cut.
4. Documentation. Every visit should end with a dated certificate of performance noting what was cleaned and any inaccessible areas, plus a service sticker on the hood and before/after photos — especially of the duct interior and fan, the parts you can't check yourself.

Questions that separate pros from polishers

• "Will you open the duct access panels, and what if my run doesn't have any?" (A pro quotes panel installation; a polisher changes the subject.)
• "Do you open and clean the exhaust fan, and do you have roof fall-protection gear?"
• "What cleaning frequency do you recommend for my cooking volume?" (The right answer maps to NFPA 96: monthly solid fuel, quarterly high-volume, semi-annual moderate, annual low — see our frequency guide.)
• "Can I see before/after photos from a recent job?"

Price is a signal, not the decision

Full-system cleanings in Central Alberta typically run $400–900 per visit. A quote at a fraction of that isn't a bargain; it's a scope cut you'll discover at inspection time. Equally, the highest quote isn't automatically the most thorough — which is why the four checks above matter more than the number.

How this site fits in

We're an independent referral service for Red Deer and Central Alberta. We've done this vetting once, properly, for one local partner — training expectations, insurance, full-system scope, documentation — so you don't have to run the checklist from scratch. Describe your kitchen to our 24/7 intake assistant and we'll connect you. And keep this page's checklist regardless: it's how you should judge anyone in your kitchen, including whoever we send.