London Restaurant Risk Assessment for Legionella

London Restaurant Risk Assessment for Legionella

Acquiesce Environmental Compliance work within all manner of commercial buildings including schools, colleges, universities, pubs, restaurants, offices, factories, social housing properties and any building with a hot & cold water system.

In Summer 2020, we completed a restaurant’s risk assessment for Legionella in London. The restaurant was closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; however the duty holder & owner was eager to have the legionella risk assessment completed, and remedial works carried out ready for re-opening.

The building contained a cold water storage tank which hadn’t been inspected previously, and contained low amount of sediment. It was then determined that the cold water tank fed all of the drinking outlets in the building, including water used for cooking. Cold water storage tanks feeding drinking water must be cleaned & disinfected on an annual basis, with sampling carried out 6 monthly to ensure that the quality of water is still safe for building users.

Our assessor also identified unvented hot water storage heaters that couldn’t distribute hot water at correct temperatures. An experienced engineer was sent to site following the assessment to attempt to fix the heaters. We identified that the heaters were beyond repair, and replacement was carried out, ensuring visitors could wash their hands in warm water.

As the building had been closed for a significant period, the cold water tank was cleaned, then dosed with chlorine at 50ppm, ensuring that the PH level of the water was checked, so the correct amount of chemical could be dosed. This was then ‘pulled’ through to all hot & cold outlets in the building, so that the full system was disinfected. Once a satisfactory disinfection period of one hour was achieved, the system was fully flushed through, so that chlorine levels were back down the level supplied to the building