Why filter questions decide the equipment choice
Restaurant extract systems are cleaned on a rota, but the rota is written for the ducts, fans and canopies — the parts that show grease. The filter stage rarely gets its own line, because it appears to be a commodity item: a frame, a mesh, a price. That is where steam-cleaning discussions go wrong. The machine you shortlist is decided by the filter you actually run, not by the size of the kitchen. A [restaurant kitchen grease cleaning](https://www.powerde.net/qingjiehangye/41.html) programme that ignores filter type will either under-clean the filters or send a machine into a task it cannot do.
Buyers who ask suppliers about [commercial kitchen steam cleaning](https://www.powerde.net/qingjiehangye/41.html) usually get an equipment sheet back within a day. Fewer of them get asked what is between the hob and the fan. The questions below are the ones worth settling before a machine is quoted, because each answer changes the cleaning method, the handling steps and the safety checks.
Which filter is fitted?
The first answer should be read off the frame, not from memory. Baffle (mesh) filters are the common default: metal panels that trap grease as air changes direction through them. Electrostatic precipitators use charged collection cells instead. Cartridge and disposable media filters sit in some systems, and a few older kitchens run a single-panel setup that was installed because it fitted, not because it was specified.
Why the answer matters: baffle filters are metal, they can be handled wet, and they are the case where hot water and [high-temperature steam grease removal](https://www.powerde.net/qingjiehangye/) do the work that detergent and cold water cannot. Cells, charged sections, media and gaskets do not behave the same way. A machine sold for filters of one type can damage another. Get the type, the frame size and the material into writing before you accept a cleaning method.
Can the filters be removed and taken to a wash point?
Ask how many filters are in the run, how they are retained, and whether one person can lift them out. A bank of heavy panels above a cooking line is awkward at best and a back injury at worst. Removal decides whether the filters are cleaned off the canopy at a wash point, or in place where they were fitted.
Filters taken to a wash point can be stood up, sprayed and rinsed with a wand, and the operator keeps both hands free. Filters cleaned in place mean working overhead at arm's length, with run-off falling onto the line below. A [fixed steam cleaning machine](https://www.powerde.net/qingjiehangye/41.html) that connects to a tap supply suits a permanent wash point, because the operator is not managing water supply and drainage twice. Where the kitchen has no wash point, that fact belongs in the quotation as a constraint, not discovered after delivery.
How often are they cleaned, and what is the deposit like?
Get the current interval and the last date. Then look at a filter pulled today. Fresh grease wipes; polymerised grease does not. Panels left for months come back with a varnished coating that holds its shape and does not move under a brush. That deposit is the whole argument for heat.
Ask the supplier what they do at each stage of the deposit. Applying heat and pressure to a light film is wasted labour. Applying steam to a thick varnish without softening it first is also wasted labour. A [dry and wet steam cleaner](https://www.powerde.net/qingjiehangye/41.html) lets an operator put heat into a heavy deposit with the drier mode, then rinse with the wetter mode once the film has released. Any supplier who describes only one mode for every filter is describing a product sheet, not your kitchen.
Where does the run-off go?
Grease-laden wash water has to leave the building somewhere. Ask for the wash point location, whether it drains through the site's grease interceptor, and who is responsible for emptying it. Filter cleaning multiplied across a week is a volume of oily water, and it ends up in a prep sink or a yard drain if the plan does not name the route.
Also ask whether the wash point allows filters to be stood upright. Laying panels flat in a tray means the operator works in a pool of the grease they have just lifted off. Standing them lets gravity do part of the work and keeps the freed deposit away from the wand.
What is protected on the canopy itself?
Filters can take a wet method; the canopy above the cooking line usually cannot. Ask for a written list of what must not be sprayed directly: lights, lamps and their seals, fan motors and their terminal boxes, dampers and their linkages, fire suppression nozzles and their caps, control wiring, and any inspection door gaskets. Cleaning the filter should not mean driving water into the fan assembly.
Ask the supplier how the machine handles its own limits. The [PowerDe HW02 steam cleaner](https://www.powerde.net/qingjiehangye/41.html) product page lists leakage protection, short-circuit protection, high-temperature protection, high-voltage protection, water-shortage protection and high-voltage explosion protection. Operators need to know those exist, and that a machine which trips one during a shift has to be reported rather than reset repeatedly.
What counts as clean, and who checks it?
Ask for the acceptance check you will be shown. A defensible one is short and physical: mesh openings visible and free of coating when held to light, no grease standing in the frame channel, no varnish left on the panel edges where the grease collects first, panels dry before refitting, and the canopy interior free of the run-off the cleaning produced. A check that reads "clean and degreased" cannot be argued over, and therefore will be.
Ask who signs, and what happens when a filter fails the check on the first pass. A supplier willing to work to your acceptance criteria will accept a re-clean at their cost. That single clause tells you more about the method than any brochure.
What are the site conditions around the job?
A machine needs power, water and a place to stand. Ask what supply is available near the wash point, whether the circuit is 220 V, and whether the unit has to be moved through a serving area to get there. A unit sized for a fixed bay behaves badly in a site with a narrow door and a busy servery. Ask the supplier to work from your photographs and layout rather than from a catalogue.
Ask about noise and about the working window. Cleaning during service in a live kitchen is rarely agreed; cleaning at 02:00 affects who you can keep on the payroll. The right interval and the right window are a labour question as much as a technical one, and both should appear in the proposal.
What does the supplier need from you?
Send the filter type, a photograph of a filter pulled today, the count and frame size, the location of the wash point and its drainage, and the current cleaning interval with the last completed date. Ask for a written method: mode, dwell, number of passes, what is protected, where the run-off goes, the acceptance check and the sign-off.
If those details change the specification, expect the quotation to change with them. Shenzhen PowerDe Automation Precision Equipment publishes parameters for the machines in its [Cleaning Equipment Series](https://www.powerde.net/qingjiehangye/), and [customized cleaning equipment](https://www.powerde.net/diaocha/) can be specified against a site that does not fit a standard configuration. Put the questions above to two or three suppliers and compare their answers, not their price lines.
A short way to use these questions
Filter type, removability, deposit condition, run-off route, protected parts, acceptance check, site services. Seven answers. A supplier who can answer all seven has a method; one who answers three is selling a machine and will leave the kitchen to work out the rest. Send your answers to the [contact page](https://www.powerde.net/contact/) with the photographs, and ask for a method matched to the extract system you run.
