[HQCS (John Kastrian)]

I asked this a long time ago,but hopefully now we have many new members,more advice may be available.
Problem is removal of long term built up grease from around oven and surrounding areas.
Getting it off stainless steel chimney etc is not too difficult as there are cleaning agents that will do this,but I need something that will remove built up very sticky grease from kitchen cupboards without risk of damage to the units. 
This is not normal grease,but asian origin and is extremely sticky,and built up over a period of several months up to several years.
Any advice appreciated,John

[BSF]

Hi John

My company does a lot of this sort of work, ie very greasy kitchens; we’ve tried all sorts of degreasers from all sorts of suppliers the best up to yet is made by Brillo, the makers of the pads.

It’s called Brillo cleaner & degreaser its very good, dilute, spray, leave for 5 minutes, agitate with a brillo pad, wipe off.

We buy it from Booker cash and carry £11 for 5Ltrs, give it a go, we also use it for bathroom tiles it works a treat!  If any posters know of where to source it cheaper please let me know!

Regards Paul   

[DP]

A lot of the difficulty with cleaning built up grease (gung) is not so much the chemicals you use its the mass (thickness) of the grease and how long the surface has had to congeal/thicken caused by drying.

Any chemical will have difficulty and take time if it is passive or not allowed to soak. Manufacturers try to get over this by adding foaming agents to keep the chemical in place for longer especially on vertical surfaces.

Acid based chemicals work very well (cold) because they effectively attack the congealed surface quickly, but can be far too aggressive for the underlying surface and cause aesthetic damage. Some citrus acid based chemicals offer compromise and safety but safety comes at a price so also have their limits.

When trying to remove grease, any chemical works  far better with heat i.e. boiling water which acts to re- solidify that harden surface allowing the chemical to work much faster, but who can work manually with boiling water which also cools too quickly to be practical unless you can hot pressure wash.

This is why high pressure steaming equipment works so well offering the best of all worlds because its localised, practical and fast and many use no chemicals at all demonstrating how efficient they are.

I no longer do this type of work, but when I did steamers were not in abundance. Wherever possible we would strip systems including chimney’s out/down and hot pressure wash them, which with a good crew was still faster then  manually doing it in situ with far better results.

We found high alkaline chemicals far better then degreasers (although a generic name for many concoctions) for those general surfaces such as Power Clean(13PH)  which also dealt with any carbonisation.

Tip: If working cold, always reduce the thickness of grease by (plastic) scraping if at all possible, it can save hours.

Sorry if I have stated the obvious here but this might be useful to others.

DP.