Servicing · 2026
Your waste disposal unit after the 2025 ban: keep, disable or replace?
A working macerator under the sink is now a compliance problem for most Kent kitchens, not a piece of equipment worth mending. This is an engineer's read on what to look at, in what order, and where the money is best spent next.
What our engineers are seeing on Kent sites
Most of the calls we take on waste disposal are the same three problems, and after 31 March 2025 the fix looks different.
- Old ISE or InSinkErator-style macerators still plumbed to drain. These grind and flush. They were fine in 2020 and they are a live compliance risk today.
- A dewaterer with a full solids bin no one is emptying. The unit is legal, but the licensed collection is missing, so the operator is out of duty-of-care compliance the second the bin is tipped down the drain.
- A grease trap that has not been serviced in eighteen months. Section 111(1)(a) of the Water Industry Act 1991 bites regardless of what the disposal unit does. FOG failures are the easier prosecution.
Trying to service any of these back to as-new is throwing good money at kit that no longer fits the rules the kitchen operates under.
The decision tree: keep, disable or replace
Walk the kitchen with our engineer and this is the sequence we work through, one piece of kit at a time.
- Is it a macerator, a waste disposal unit or a dewaterer? If ground food goes to the drain, it is a macerator by function. If solids drop into a bin for a licensed carrier to lift, it is a dewaterer.
- Is the discharge line still live? Follow the outlet. A "dewaterer" plumbed to the waste stack instead of a bin is a macerator wearing the wrong label.
- Does the site have a licensed food-waste collection? Contract on the wall, waste transfer notes on file, bin schedule that fits the operation. Absent any one of these, the compliance argument fails.
- Is there a FOG separator or GRU downstream, sized to the wash-up flow? A grease separator to BS EN 1825 parts 1 and 2, a certified grease removal unit or a documented biological dosing system. Sized on the appliance list, not eyeballed.
- Is the service history documented? Grease traps need pumping and cleaning, dewaterers need bearings and seal service, biological dosing needs the reservoir kept charged. Records that a water authority and an EHO will accept.
⚠️ Symptoms our engineers treat as decommission triggers
These are on-site signs that a unit needs disconnecting, not repairing.
- Repeat blockages on the same wash-up run. Once we are pulling food slurry out of a manhole for the second time in twelve months, the water company is already aware.
- A macerator that trips its overload on frozen or fibrous waste. The unit is being asked to do work it is not designed for. Even if we replace the motor, the disposal route is no longer legal.
- Grey water leaving a dewaterer that fails a simple grease and turbidity check. The water authority's standard is set locally; if the effluent looks wrong to us on a routine visit, they will hear about it eventually.
- A grease trap emptied only when smells force it. Reactive emptying is not a service plan. The water company treats an unrecorded trap as an untreated discharge.
- Kit installed before 2015 with no manufacturer support left. No spares route and no O&M manual makes a compliant future impossible. Decommission and cap.
Get a written compliance position on the current kit
Our engineers will survey the disposal unit, the FOG kit and the drainage, then write you a position statement your EHO, insurer and larger clients can rely on.
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Service Agreements
Planned maintenance for FOG separators, GRUs and dewaterers, with the records the water authority and your insurer will accept.
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Fault call-outs, decommissioning of disposal units, drain investigations and compliance surveys across east and central Kent.
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Engineer-written diagnostic and compliance guides for Kent operators.
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What does "permanently disabling" a waste disposal unit actually involve on site?
Isolate the power at the fused spur or the local isolator, remove the electrical connection, and cap the drain outlet with a mechanical stopper so the run cannot be reused by accident. We update the drainage schedule and the site's food safety management system so the position is clear at the next EHO visit. On sites where the sink base is being kept in service, we usually remove the unit fully and blank the drain, because a disabled unit still under the sink invites someone to reconnect it.
How often should a grease separator or GRU be serviced?
Sites we look after typically run on quarterly service visits with monthly team-side cleaning, but the interval is set by the flow and the menu, not by the calendar. A pub kitchen at 60 covers a night is not on the same schedule as a fifty-bed care home. Under a Service Agreement we set the interval from the first service, then adjust it once we have data. Records go on the compliance file the water company will ask for.
Can you get the ban to apply from 2027 instead of 2025 for our site?
Only if the business has fewer than ten employees across the whole undertaking, not just on shift. Insurers, larger clients and public-sector procurement teams are already asking for the 2025 position now, so the extension often does not help commercially even where it applies legally. Any site in Wales is on the tighter 2024 rule regardless of headcount.
Who talks to the water company if we have had repeated blockages?
Either party can, and it is better to be first. Where we survey a site with a blockage history, we put the position, the remediation plan and the service intervals in writing so the operator can hand it straight to the water authority. Water companies close cases faster when a plan is on the table.
We have a dewaterer we were told is compliant. How do we prove it?
Three things on file. A manufacturer's certificate confirming the unit separates one hundred per cent of solids into the bin, a licensed food-waste carrier contract with recent waste transfer notes, and a documented FOG management system covering the grey water leaving the unit. If any one of the three is missing the compliance argument does not hold, whatever the sales literature said at installation.
What does a service plan for this kit actually cost?
It varies with the kit list and the site, but for a single-kitchen operator with a grease separator or GRU and a dewaterer, a compliant service plan is usually in the low hundreds a quarter. Cheaper than one avoidable blockage. We quote by kit list after the first survey, and the service agreement carries the records that keep the compliance position defensible.
Book a compliance survey
One engineer visit produces a written position on the disposal unit, the FOG kit and the drainage, plus a proposed service schedule you can hand to your insurer or auditor.
Call 01304 873469Service Agreements