Letchworth · 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 Letchworth, and certify it to the TR19 Grease standard your insurer expects.
Letchworth
Letchworth 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.
From Leys Avenue to Eastcheap and Norton Way, the town's cooklines vent through long hidden ducting that climbs to a roof fan. We clean it end to end to the TR19 Grease standard - not just the canopy, but the flat and rising sections where grease really collects.
The same crews clean dry ventilation and air-handling ductwork in offices, schools and civic buildings, plus the combustible lint runs behind hotel and care-home dryers. High-turnover sites - college refectories, care-home and pub kitchens and the busy town-centre cafes and takeaways - build grease fastest in the concealed lengths where flame spreads.
The standard
TR19 Grease is the benchmark Letchworth insurers and fire risk assessors expect - measured across the whole extract run, not just the visible mouth of the canopy.
The standard works in grease-film thickness, fixing the depth at which a run must be cleaned and re-tested. In the shared roof voids around Leys Avenue and Norton Way, wiping the canopy and filters leaves the ductwork - the long concealed sections that gather grease and carry fire - untouched. We open the full Letchworth run through existing and newly cut inspection hatches, strip it to bare metal, log grease-depth readings at fixed points before and after, and issue a TR19 Grease certificate with the post-clean depths recorded.
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 Letchworth hotels, care homes and gyms.
On the ground in Letchworth
We are in Letchworth's ductwork and plant every week. The proof is the jobs, not the stock photos.
A busy GP surgery in Letchworth had fine grey dust and debris built up across the supply ductwork and ceiling diffusers. We cleaned the branch supply ducts with air whips under negative pressure and renewed the AHU panel filters. The main rooms felt fresher and the stale, dusty smell was gone, with everything left clean and ready to use. A golden retriever kept a close eye on the whole job from a sunny windowsill.
When it is due
Ductwork rarely warns you politely. In a busy Letchworth kitchen these are the tells.
Watch for steam that hangs in the room, cooking smells creeping back over the tables, a canopy weeping onto a Leys Avenue line, grease crusting at the filter rims, or a Letchworth insurer or fire assessor calling for a TR19 certificate you do not hold. How often it needs doing rides on the cooking load - a hard-frying Eastcheap kitchen far more than a quiet daytime cafe - and the certificate fixes that interval, so the next clean is planned, not chanced.
How it runs
Inspect the full Letchworth 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 Norton Way 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 Letchworth fire logbook.
Why it matters
Three duties push every Letchworth 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 Letchworth 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 Leys Avenue 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. To a Letchworth insurer a current TR19 Grease certificate is the proof the extract has been kept up. Let it lapse and a fire claim can be scaled back or declined outright - the kind of gap nobody wants to find with the kitchen already gutted.
Hygiene and environmental health. When North Hertfordshire District 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 Leys Avenue kitchen sits in a tighter band than a daytime Eastcheap cafe. We measure the grease load and confirm your interval.
Yes. We clean the dry ductwork and air-handling in Letchworth offices, schools and public buildings, and the lint-heavy laundry ducts in the Hertfordshire hotels and care homes, alongside kitchen grease ducts.
Yes - from Leys Avenue and Eastcheap kitchens to the offices, schools and industrial units across Letchworth and the wider Hertfordshire.
Yes. We work overnight, early mornings and closing days for the Leys Avenue and Eastcheap kitchens, and around shift patterns at commercial and production sites, at no extra charge for out-of-hours work.
Little, if it is planned. We survey the Letchworth run first, agree a slot overnight or on a close day, sheet off the kitchen and clean section by section, so an Eastcheap cookline is back in service for the next shift.
The full run, canopy through the concealed horizontal and vertical ductwork to the roof fan - the hidden sections a canopy-only clean leaves loaded, which matters in the tight stock around Leys Avenue and Norton Way where the runs are long and awkward.
Yes. The fan at the top of a Norton Way 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.
Local knowledge
J. M. Dent moved his bookbinding business to Letchworth in 1906 and built the Temple Press west of Dunhams Lane, and by 1909 it was turning out around forty thousand books a week for the famous Everyman's Library. Work like that filled the air with paper and binding dust, but modern premises hide their dust inside sealed ductwork instead, where grease and debris build unseen until airflow fails or fire finds a path. We clean and inspect ventilation and extract ductwork across the town. Every run is handed over with photographic before-and-after evidence.
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