Berkhamsted · TR19 Grease
We clean the full commercial duct run - grease, dry and laundry ductwork, canopy to roof fan - for kitchens, offices and industrial sites across Berkhamsted, and certify it to the TR19 Grease standard your insurer expects.
Berkhamsted
Berkhamsted rates hundreds of food premises, and behind a large share sits an extract duct a canopy clean never reaches - plus the dry ductwork and air-handling that keep its offices and public buildings running.
Kitchens across Berkhamsted work out of tight, mixed premises - Castle Street, Gravel Path, Northchurch - their extract snaking through concealed voids to roof-mounted fans. We take the whole run to the TR19 Grease standard, hood to fan, reaching the horizontal legs and vertical risers a canopy wipe never touches.
Kitchens are only half the work - we also strip the dry supply and extract ductwork of Berkhamsted schools, offices and civic buildings, and the lint-choked dryer runs behind its hotels and care homes. It is the hardest-pressed kitchens - school and college kitchens, hotel and pub kitchens, restaurant kitchens and the busy town-centre takeaways - that glaze their hidden ducting quickest, and that coating is the road a fire takes.
The standard
TR19 Grease is the benchmark Berkhamsted insurers and fire risk assessors expect - measured across the whole extract run, not just the visible mouth of the canopy.
Because the standard is written around film thickness, it sets the depth that triggers a clean and re-test. In the mixed roof spaces around Castle Street and Northchurch, a canopy-and-filter wipe leaves the duct interior - where grease piles up and a fire runs - completely alone. We reach the whole Berkhamsted run through existing hatches and new ones we cut, clean back to bright metal, take before-and-after grease-depth figures at set points, and certify it to TR19 Grease with those depths on the record.
By system
The fire risk. Fried-food extract coats duct walls in combustible grease; cleaned canopy to fan and certified to TR19 Grease.
Supply and general extract in offices and public buildings, carrying dust and debris that throttles airflow and loads the air-handling unit; cleaned to TR19.
The hidden one. Tumble-dryer ducting packs with lint - highly combustible - in Berkhamsted hotels, care homes and gyms.
On the ground in Berkhamsted
We are in Berkhamsted's ductwork and plant every week. The proof is the jobs, not the stock photos.
A thick mat of fibre lint had packed itself into the laundry exhaust ductwork at a well-known Berkhamsted guest house, leaving the room warm and humid. We cleared the packed lint by hand, renewed a crushed section of flexible ducting and cleaned off the roof discharge. The system ran cooler and cleaner, and by mid-week the laundry was turning around faster. We slotted the work into a quiet Monday to suit the manager, who was really pleased with how it went.
When it is due
Ductwork rarely warns you politely. In a busy Berkhamsted kitchen these are the tells.
Smells pushing back into the dining room, a canopy that drips onto a Castle Street cookline, extraction that no longer clears the steam, visible grease at the filter edges, or a Berkhamsted insurer or fire risk assessment asking for a TR19 certificate you cannot produce. Cleaning frequency tracks use - a hard-frying Gravel Path kitchen needs it far more often than a daytime cafe - and your certificate states the interval, so the next clean is never a guess.
How it runs
Inspect the full Berkhamsted run, find the access gaps in the concealed sections, agree scope and frequency.
Fit inspection hatches where the run is sealed - common in the older Northchurch conversions - and protect the kitchen.
Canopy to roof fan, down to bare metal, with before-and-after grease-depth evidence.
TR19 Grease certificate, grease-depth record and next-due date for your Berkhamsted fire logbook.
Why it matters
Three duties push every Berkhamsted operator to keep ductwork clean, and they reinforce one another.
Fire safety law. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the responsible person for a Berkhamsted premises must assess and manage fire risk. A grease-laden duct is one of the most serious risks in any catering building, because a flare-up on a Castle Street cookline can travel the ductwork and spread fire through concealed voids. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the HSE reinforce the same duty of care.
Insurance. A live TR19 Grease certificate is what a Berkhamsted insurer treats as evidence the system is maintained. Miss it and a fire claim may be reduced or refused - an expensive surprise once the damage is done.
Hygiene and environmental health. When Dacorum Borough Council carries out a food hygiene inspection it judges the physical state of the premises, and ventilation is part of that. A grease-choked extract can pull down the rating an Environmental Health Officer gives, on top of the odour and the weakening airflow your staff put up with.
It is set by cooking hours under TR19 Grease - roughly every three months for heavy use of 12 to 16 hours a day, every six for moderate, every twelve for light. A hard-frying Castle Street kitchen sits in a tighter band than a daytime Gravel Path cafe. We measure the grease load and confirm your interval.
A dated TR19 certificate, before-and-after photographs of each section, and an access report for your fire logbook - the evidence a Castle Street operator's insurer and fire risk assessor expect.
Yes. We work overnight, early mornings and closing days for the Castle Street and Gravel Path kitchens, and around shift patterns at commercial and production sites, at no extra charge for out-of-hours work.
We fit compliant access panels where the ductwork has none, so every internal section can be reached, cleaned, inspected and certified - common in the older Northchurch conversions where the run was boxed in with no hatches.
Yes - from Castle Street and Gravel Path kitchens to the offices, schools and industrial units across Berkhamsted and the wider Hertfordshire.
Yes. The fan at the top of a Northchurch or city-centre riser is where grease throws off the blades and the run ends - we degrease it and its housing, because a loaded fan is what finally stops a system pulling.
Little, if it is planned. We survey the Berkhamsted run first, agree a slot overnight or on a close day, sheet off the kitchen and clean section by section, so a Gravel Path cookline is back in service for the next shift.
Local knowledge
For much of the nineteenth century Berkhamsted lived by timber, and Key's Timber Yard ran a thriving trade importing Canadian baulks by canal, its men regularly unloading seventy-eight-foot lengths by hand before the firm passed to Alsfords in 1963. Modern premises hide their dust and grease inside sealed ductwork instead, where it builds unseen until airflow fails or fire finds a path. We clean and inspect ventilation and extract ductwork across the town, then hand over photographic before-and-after evidence of every run.
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