Canopy, filters & fan
There is no single interval for cleaning baffle filters. How often they need it is driven by how many hours the kitchen runs and how greasy the cooking is - a heavy chargrill loads filters far faster than a light steaming operation. The honest answer is a routine matched to your kitchen, not a number copied from someone else's.
The short answer
There is no single interval for cleaning baffle filters. How often they need it is driven by how many hours the kitchen runs and how greasy the cooking is - a heavy chargrill loads filters far faster than a light steaming operation. The honest answer is a routine matched to your kitchen, not a number copied from someone else's.
The detail
The load on a filter depends on two things: hours of use and the grease intensity of the cooking. TR19 Grease reflects this for the wider system, recommending three-monthly cleaning for heavy use of twelve to sixteen hours a day, six-monthly for moderate use of six to twelve hours, and yearly for light use of two to six hours. Filters, sitting first in the grease path, need attention on a much tighter cycle than the duct.
In practice that means baffle filters are a daily-to-weekly job for the kitchen, not a periodic one for the contractor. A busy kitchen should wipe or swap filters daily and give them a proper hot soak weekly, because grease left on the vanes bakes hard within a shift or two. A lighter kitchen can stretch the soak interval, but even there a filter left for months becomes a baked, free-flowing bypass for grease.
The cooking style shifts the interval sharply. A wok range, a chargrill or a fryer throws far more airborne grease than a steamer or a combi oven, so two kitchens running the same hours can need very different filter routines. The right frequency is the one that keeps the vanes clean and free-draining at all times, whatever the clock says.
The reliable way to set it is to watch the filters themselves. If they are visibly loaded, dripping, or the extraction has weakened before the next scheduled soak, the interval is too long. Tightening the routine until filters never reach that state is cheaper than letting grease pass into the plenum and duct, where the periodic TR19 cleaning cost lives.
What it means for you
A workable filter routine is built into the kitchen's daily close, not bolted on. Filters come down at the end of service, go into a soak or the utensil washer, and go back up clean for the next day, with the collection channel and gutter cleared at the same time. Made part of the shutdown, it takes minutes; left as an occasional task, it slips and grease wins.
The periodic professional clean then rides on top of that daily discipline. Well-kept filters mean the specialist visit is dealing with a system that has not been loaded from the front, so the duct and fan stay cleaner for longer and the whole cleaning cost falls. Neglected filters do the opposite - they push grease downstream and shorten the interval the duct itself can safely run.
The signal to adjust is always the filters. If they are clean and draining freely at every check, the routine is right; if they are loading between soaks, tighten it. Setting frequency by observation rather than by a borrowed number is what keeps grease at the filter, where it is cheap to remove, instead of in the system, where it is not.
The service behind the guide
Sibling guides
Cleaning filters between visits · How a greasy filter spreads grease · Wok and tandoor frequency
Questions
There is no single interval. Busy kitchens should wipe or swap filters daily and soak them weekly; lighter kitchens can stretch the soak. The right frequency keeps the vanes clean and free-draining at all times.
Hours of use and grease intensity. A chargrill or wok loads filters far faster than a steamer, so two kitchens on the same hours can need very different routines.
TR19 Grease recommends three, six or twelve-monthly system cleaning by usage. Filters sit first in the grease path and need much more frequent attention - daily to weekly - than the ductwork.
If filters are visibly loaded, dripping, or extraction weakens before the next soak, the interval is too long. Tighten it until filters never reach that state.
By the time a baffle looks dirty it is already baked and passing grease downstream. A routine that soaks filters before they load is cheaper than removing grease from the duct later.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
We clean the whole path - canopy, filters, plenum, ductwork and fan - and verify the result to TR19 Grease. Call or email for a clear quote and a certificate you can show your insurer.