Grease Traps: Take Care of Even the Small Ones
Almost every brick-and-mortar food establishment is equipped with some sort of grease trap. Generally, when a call comes in for grease trap cleaning, callers indicate that the service need is related to compliance. Regulatory compliance is indeed important but let’s drive the conversation beyond the regulations and into why that concrete hole in the ground is so important. Then let’s connect it back to everyone’s favorite topic: saving and spending funds.
Grease Trap Basics
All food establishments generate, use, and have to clean fats, oils and greases. The cleaning process is what drives the need for grease traps: hot water, detergent and cleansers lift, disperse and transport the oils away from the floors, plates, forks, etc. Unfortunately, physics and chemistry only contribute so much. The wastewater cools as it enters the drain. Detergent ingredients get diluted, start to break down and lose their effectiveness. The grease and oil you rinsed off the plates comes out of solution and sticks together. Next, those cold, slimy clumps of grease congeal and stick to the walls of drain pipes - particularly in the twists and turns. Left unchecked, these now-odious bricks of grease grow larger, eventually becoming a drain-slowing, fund-draining fatberg. Anything that gets through eventually makes its way to surface water where it helps destroy ecosystems.
Instead of fighting the physics and chemistry of fat, grease traps embrace those same characteristics. Instead of letting the congealing/accumulation happen in a pipe, a grease trap slows down the water flow long enough for the grease to separate out. Water passes on through a line in the bottom of the trap. The grease stays behind.
Dealing with the leftovers:
That mass of slowly rotting grease gradually builds up whether the trap has a 1000-gallon pit or it’s a 50-gallon hole in the floor of a coffee shop. There are several possibilities for what happens next. Some small establishments may direct employees to open that hole in the floor and scrape out as much as possible. Others check the levels periodically and wait until absolutely necessary. At other places, thoughts of the grease trap get pushed aside until the sink takes 15 minutes to drain or the system backs up, overflows and waits for a team member to clean it with a mop and bucket. Finally, an inspector may stop by and find the problem for you. None of those outcomes are desirable.
The lowest stress and lowest overall cost-solution is to call Sump & Trap Cleaning and have us visit periodically. The team can do a quick inspection, evacuate the contents and power-wash the walls. Drains flow faster, your team members stay focused on serving customers, inspections go smoothly and you have one less thing to worry about. Most importantly, the environment is protected. It’s also worth noting that periodic maintenance costs much less than Emergency Response work.
Almost every brick-and-mortar food establishment is equipped with some sort of grease trap. Generally, when a call comes in for grease trap cleaning, callers indicate that the service need is related to compliance. Regulatory compliance is indeed important but let’s drive the conversation beyond the regulations and into why that concrete hole in the ground is so important. Then let’s connect it back to everyone’s favorite topic: saving and spending funds.
Grease Trap Basics
All food establishments generate, use, and have to clean fats, oils and greases. The cleaning process is what drives the need for grease traps: hot water, detergent and cleansers lift, disperse and transport the oils away from the floors, plates, forks, etc. Unfortunately, physics and chemistry only contribute so much. The wastewater cools as it enters the drain. Detergent ingredients get diluted, start to break down and lose their effectiveness. The grease and oil you rinsed off the plates comes out of solution and sticks together. Next, those cold, slimy clumps of grease congeal and stick to the walls of drain pipes - particularly in the twists and turns. Left unchecked, these now-odious bricks of grease grow larger, eventually becoming a drain-slowing, fund-draining fatberg. Anything that gets through eventually makes its way to surface water where it helps destroy ecosystems.
Instead of fighting the physics and chemistry of fat, grease traps embrace those same characteristics. Instead of letting the congealing/accumulation happen in a pipe, a grease trap slows down the water flow long enough for the grease to separate out. Water passes on through a line in the bottom of the trap. The grease stays behind.
Dealing with the leftovers:
That mass of slowly rotting grease gradually builds up whether the trap has a 1000-gallon pit or it’s a 50-gallon hole in the floor of a coffee shop. There are several possibilities for what happens next. Some small establishments may direct employees to open that hole in the floor and scrape out as much as possible. Others check the levels periodically and wait until absolutely necessary. At other places, thoughts of the grease trap get pushed aside until the sink takes 15 minutes to drain or the system backs up, overflows and waits for a team member to clean it with a mop and bucket. Finally, an inspector may stop by and find the problem for you. None of those outcomes are desirable.
The lowest stress and lowest overall cost-solution is to call Sump & Trap Cleaning and have us visit periodically. The team can do a quick inspection, evacuate the contents and power-wash the walls. Drains flow faster, your team members stay focused on serving customers, inspections go smoothly and you have one less thing to worry about. Most importantly, the environment is protected. It’s also worth noting that periodic maintenance costs much less than Emergency Response work.
