Reading cooks on an institutional scale as well as a commercial one. The Royal Berkshire Hospital occupies a long, narrow site that climbs to Addington Road, and its kitchens serve every day of the year. To the south, the University of Reading’s Whiteknights campus has cafés, bars and food outlets running into double figures, the largest of them Park Eat beside Windsor Hall, whose residents eat there on a meal plan. Add the restaurants, pubs and takeaways of the centre and the town’s grease arrives from kitchens of every size and timetable. For kitchens of every one of those kinds, TrueFlow empties, cleans and records grease traps and grease separators, as a standing programme or a one-off attendance, and a Waste Transfer Note is handed over for every load removed. The grease trap cleaning page covers the service itself; what follows is how it applies in Reading.
Traps that fill to a timetable
A campus kitchen fills its trap in term and barely touches it in August. A hospital kitchen fills its trap at the same rate in every week of the year. A takeaway near the station fills it fastest on Friday and Saturday nights. One emptying interval cannot serve all three, so the schedule for a Reading site follows the fill rate of each unit rather than a calendar: closer together in term, stretched over the vacations, held steady where the output never changes. Two or three collections in, the real rate is known and the dates are moved to suit it.
What a visit involves on a Reading site
The clean itself is the one described step by step on the service page, from emptying the whole contents to proving the outlet under flow; what changes in Reading is access and timing. On a hospital or campus site that means the service yard and a slot that misses the busiest sitting, usually early morning or the lull after lunch, and with the phones staffed around the clock neither is an awkward booking.
The note, the carrier and the pipe beyond
Grease trap contents are controlled waste. TrueFlow Ltd, an Upper Tier registered waste carrier, takes them away, and the Waste Transfer Note for each load is completed and signed on site. That note is the first document an inspector from Thames Water, the sewerage undertaker every Reading kitchen drains into, asks to see when a shared sewer has fouled; the rules behind it are in the UK grease trap regulations guide.
An emptied trap does nothing for grease that has already passed it. If the outlet runs sluggishly, the kitchen line beyond can be jetted while the engineer is there (£150 and up including VAT, at pressures of up to 4000psi), which returns the run to full bore in the same visit. Why a food business should want all of this is argued under kitchens and restaurants.
Pricing for Reading kitchens
The figure for a Reading site is built from the traps on it and the interval each one needs; the visit that sizes them carries no charge, and the price is written down before anything is booked. A trap that fails during service is handled as an emergency. Washroom stacks, car park gullies and the rest are under commercial drainage in Reading.
Grease trap questions from Reading kitchens
Can several grease traps on one Reading site be emptied in a single visit?
Yes. Where a campus, hospital or multi-outlet building has more than one trap, the units are emptied and cleaned in sequence on one attendance, each photographed and recorded separately, and the Waste Transfer Note covers everything removed that day.
Can a hospital kitchen’s trap be emptied without stopping the ward meal service?
Yes, if the visit is placed between services. A ward kitchen plates breakfast, lunch and supper to a fixed timetable, and the trap serves the pot wash and dishwashers rather than the cooking line, so the clean goes into the gap after one service has been washed down and before the next begins. The kitchen is asked to hold the dishwashers for the duration; the hobs and ovens carry on.
Is grease trap waste classed as hazardous waste?
Not when it contains only edible fats and oils, which is what a kitchen trap should hold. The List of Wastes entry that fits that material, 19 08 09, is a non-hazardous code for grease and oil mixtures from oil and water separation containing only edible oil and fats. It remains controlled waste, which means the duty of care, the registered-carrier check and the two-year record all still apply.
A date for the trap
The first collection is booked on 0808 175 7440, or send the site details and a sizing visit follows. Reading’s homes are covered on their own page.