Wokingham’s newest kitchens had their grease management designed in. Peach Place, a dozen or so restaurant and shop units around a pedestrianised square in the town centre, and Elms Field, the regeneration scheme on the edge of the centre anchored by an Everyman cinema and a 95-bedroom Premier Inn, with new food units alongside, were built after Approved Document H began expecting the drainage from a commercial hot-food kitchen to pass through a grease separator to BS EN 1825, or an equivalent. A unit fitted out under that guidance will usually have a grease separator sized for its kitchen, often below ground and sometimes shared, with a short service history that will be read closely at the first lease event. In the new units and the older stock alike, TrueFlow services both kinds of unit across Wokingham, on a programme or as a single job, and a Waste Transfer Note accompanies every load. Every step of the service is described under grease trap cleaning.
Traps younger than their leases
An old under-sink trap in a converted shop and a new below-ground grease separator serving a row of units fail the same way, by filling up. The one mistake that applies to both is treating the fitting of the unit as the end of the job; the legal picture, and what a dated file of Waste Transfer Notes proves, is set out in our UK grease trap regulations guide.
Separators below ground, traps below the sink
Where one grease separator serves several units, the lease usually places it with the landlord or management company, while each tenant stays answerable for what its own kitchen sends into it; one scheduled clean for the shared unit, with the Waste Transfer Note issued to the contractual holder of the waste and copies to the tenants, keeps everyone covered. In the older part of town each trap belongs to the kitchen above it, and the only question is whether it is emptied before it is full.
The visit, the note and the line behind it
Every attendance is the full clean set out on the service page: solids out as well as the floating layer, walls and baffles scraped, the unit refilled and checked under flow, with before-and-after photographs on the record. The contents go with TrueFlow Ltd, Upper Tier waste carrier CBDU538687 in the Environment Agency’s listing, with the Waste Transfer Note completed on the spot. Where grease has been passing into the pipe beyond, that run is jetted before the engineer moves on, at up to 4000psi, for £150 upwards including VAT. Town-centre visits go in before the morning deliveries or after the last cover, and a separator cover in a square is best lifted before the tables outside it fill; the line is answered at any hour, so either is a plain booking. Enforcement, lease clauses and the rest of the case are set out for kitchens and restaurants.
Pricing, agreed before the lid comes off
The figure for a Wokingham kitchen is worked out from the unit it has and the interval it needs; the sizing visit is free of charge and the amount is confirmed on paper ahead of the first clean. A mid-service failure is attended as an emergency. Beyond the trap itself, see commercial drainage in Wokingham.
Wokingham grease trap questions
Is a below-ground grease separator cleaned differently from an under-sink trap?
The principle is the same, the scale is not. An under-sink trap is emptied in the kitchen and scraped by hand in minutes. A below-ground grease separator is reached through an external cover, holds far more, and its chamber, baffles and inlet and outlet fittings take longer to clean because they carry a thicker layer of set fat. Both are refilled with clean water afterwards, and both get a Waste Transfer Note.
Does a grease separator below a public square need the paving lifted to service it?
No. A separator set below paving has an access cover at ground level, sized for the chamber to be emptied and cleaned through it, so the paving stays put. What needs planning is the ground around the cover: a few square metres kept clear of tables and pedestrians for the duration, which is why the visit goes in before the square fills.
A café is opening next month. When should its first trap clean be booked?
Sooner than instinct suggests. A new trap starts empty, so the first clean is not urgent on day one, but an inspection a few weeks after opening shows whether the unit is coping and how fast it fills, and the schedule is set from that. Booked at opening, it avoids the common pattern of a first clean prompted by a blocked sink.
Start the record early
To put a trap or separator on a schedule, or to have one inspected before the lease asks, TrueFlow answers on 0808 175 7440, or a site visit can be requested online. Houses rather than kitchens? See Wokingham.