Phoenix Journal · Kitchens & Extraction
A kitchen that waits for the heatwave to think about heat has left it too late. The highest-value summer job is the one most operators overlook - servicing the system that actually cools the room.
A commercial kitchen is a hot place in January. By July, on the wrong week, it becomes a genuine health and safety problem - and the difference between an operation that copes and one that buckles is almost always work done in spring, before the first serious warm spell. The Health and Safety Executive was blunt after last summer that employers should treat it as a wake-up call, and warned that hotter summers will keep affecting both worker health and productivity unless the risks are properly assessed.
The legal position is worth stating plainly because it is so often misunderstood. There is no maximum workplace temperature in UK law. What the Workplace Regulations require is a reasonable temperature, and what the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations require is a suitable assessment of the risks - including the risk from extreme heat. A kitchen that waits until a heatwave to think about any of this has left it far too late.
Getting ready for summer, then, is not a single dramatic intervention. It is a short list of unglamorous jobs booked in good time, so that when the temperature climbs the kitchen is already set up to shed heat rather than trap it.
Start with the system that cools
The single most important piece of summer readiness is the one most operators overlook: the extraction system. In a commercial kitchen the canopy and ductwork are the main means of removing heat, not a bolt-on to the cooking line, and a system running below its designed airflow is quietly making every hot day worse. A canopy and duct choked with grease moves less air and runs hotter, so a system that limps through winter can fail outright in July - which is exactly why a pre-summer service and clean is the highest-value job on the list.
Around that, the practical measures are well established and cheap. Move the most demanding prep to the cooler ends of the day, keep cold drinking water within easy reach of the line, build in extra breaks when the mercury climbs, and check that the make-up air supply is actually working so the extraction has fresh air to pull. None of it is complicated; all of it is far easier to arrange in April than to improvise in a crisis.
Treat summer as a predictable annual event with a fixed prep list, and the heatwave that floors a neighbouring kitchen becomes something yours has already planned around. The practical prep list is short and repeatable: service and clean the extraction, confirm the make-up air is delivering its share, swap out tired filters, and set out the hot-day drill for water, rest breaks and keeping a closer eye on staff working the hottest stations. Written down once, it becomes a checklist you run every spring rather than a scramble you improvise every July.
Know the signs
Preparation also means training the team to recognise trouble before it becomes an emergency. Heat stress builds quietly - tiredness, headache, dizziness, cramps, then heat exhaustion and, untreated, heatstroke - and a busy chef in the middle of service is often the last to notice it in themselves. Knowing the early signs, and having permission to act on them, is as much a part of readiness as any piece of kit, which is why the detail in heat stress in commercial kitchens: spotting and preventing it belongs in the summer briefing. Pregnant staff, older workers and anyone with a heart or respiratory condition need particular attention when the kitchen heats up.
The business case
Servicing the extraction before summer is not only a welfare measure - it pays back in ways that show up on the numbers. A clean system moves air efficiently, holds the temperature down, protects the food in storage, keeps staff working rather than wilting, and reduces the errors and near-misses that heat produces. That combined return is set out in the operational case for cleaner extraction in summer. Booked in spring, a clean and service is a modest, planned cost; left until the system fails in a July heatwave, it becomes an emergency call-out during your busiest trading, at the worst possible price.
Questions
No. UK law sets no maximum workplace temperature. What it requires is a reasonable temperature and a suitable risk assessment of heat as a hazard, under the Workplace Regulations and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations. Kitchens are recognised as high-heat environments, so the duty to assess and manage the risk is real even without a fixed limit.
Service and clean the extraction system. In a commercial kitchen the canopy and ductwork are the main means of removing heat, and a system running below its designed airflow makes every hot day worse. Booked in spring it is a modest planned cost; left until it fails in July it becomes an emergency call-out during peak trading.
Move demanding prep to cooler parts of the day, keep cold water within reach of the line, build in extra breaks, check the make-up air is working, and train the team to spot heat stress early. Give particular attention to pregnant staff, older workers and anyone with a heart or respiratory condition.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
A pre-summer clean keeps your extraction moving air at its designed rate - the difference between a kitchen that copes and one that buckles. Phoenix cleans to a documented standard.