Improve Grease Trap Maintenance With The Drain Strainer™
Anyone who regularly spends time maintaining busy commercial kitchens knows that a common enemy is grease.
Regular grease trap maintenance is a crucial part of ensuring your commercial kitchen runs as efficiently as possible.
Whether you’re a restauranteur, bar or cafe owner, hotelier, hospital, nursing home or casino, or employed to maintain kitchens in such establishments, proper kitchen maintenance goes a long way in ensuring your kitchen runs smoothly. You don’t want the dishes to start piling up or have any nasty smells the drive customers away when the grease trap stops working.
The last thing you want to deal with in a busy commercial kitchen is unwanted issues caused by poor maintenance and a lazy cleaning schedule.
One of the best ways to cut down on problems with grease in your commercial kitchen is eliminating as much grease from your pipes as possible and keeping any unnecessary food debris from clogging up your grease trap.
Know the Facts
An EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) report to Congress found that “grease from restaurants, homes, industrial sources are the most common cause (47%) of drain blockages.”
By taking steps to keep grease away from your drains, you’re part of the solution, not the problem.
According to the EPA, the amount of collected grease trap waste and grease going into sewage plants is enormous. The EPA calculates that it ranges between 800 to 17,000 pounds a year per restaurant.
Just think of the kind of damage that kind of grease build-up can do to your commercial kitchen over time.
Don’t Pour Grease Down the Drain
Most of us think that throwing water and detergent at a greasy pan is the solution. Instead, let the grease dry. Then scrape it off and throw the fat into the trash. Clean your pans after that.
Not only are you saving your drains, but you’ll also use less water and detergent.
The more straightforward solution to prevent grease from entering the local drainage system is with a grease interceptor, which is why most municipalities require you to install a grease trap.
Keep Your Grease Trap Clean
Working in a busy kitchen is tough. The hours are long and punishing. There’s often little time to remember details such as grease trap maintenance. Once you’ve invested in a grease trap, it’s essential you remember to keep it clean so it can do its job.
Add grease trap cleaning to your regular deep cleaning schedule so that you’re protecting your investment in the short and long term.
There’s no way to sugar coat it. Cleaning grease traps stinks. The best time to clean your grease trap is after closing and when all the other things in your kitchen have been scrubbed down. Alternatively, put it down as a “first thing in the morning” kind of job before you open the kitchen for service.
Take the lid off the grease trap and do so slowly. Rough handling can lead to you breaking or damaging the lid gasket.
Install The Drain Strainer™
Invented by a former restaurant owner, The Drain Strainer™ will allow you to pump your grease trap less often, because it captures all the food debris that would normally clog your grease interceptor.
Your grease trap separates the grease from the water, but The Drain Strainer™ separates food solids and other sink waste. This allows the water from your sink to filter through a strainer drawer.
The solids that generally clog up your pipes are captured while the greasy water continues on to your grease trap.
The result? Installing The Drain Strainer™ will lessen the need for frequent grease trap pumping. Long-term, it has many advantages, including saving you time and money.
The Regulations
When you clean your grease trap, measure the amount of grease there is inside the grease trap. This isn’t just a nerdy thing to do. It’s actually a requirement by the EPA and part of the EPA’s program of controlling fats, oils, and grease discharge from food service establishments.
The EPA requires you to record your findings in what it calls a FOG (fat, oil, grease) report.
If there’s any water in your grease trap, pour it into a bucket and keep it. You can now remove the grease from your grease trap with a scoop or something similar.
Make sure you do this thoroughly and scrape the bottom, sides, and the lid, so there’s no grease left.
After you’ve done this, you can clean the trap, including flushing it through with water. Then you can put the water you collected earlier back into the grease trap and replace the lid.
Many local municipalities have their own regulations and codes for food establishments to prevent grease from getting into the local sewer system.
Regular grease trap maintenance will ensure you are compliant with regulations and avoid a potential fine if you are inspected, and your grease trap maintenance is not sufficient.
Work With A Professional Company
Battling the horrors of trapped grease and all its causes can take you away from the job of taking care of your customers. There are many issues connected to excess grease problems including:
- Horrible recurring odors
- Blocked or cracked drains that can lead to other problems such as rats, sewage leakages, etc
- Grease fires
- Slippery surfaces that cause accidents
Aside from investing in The Drain Strainer™ and a grease trap, employing a company experienced in removing grease, dirt, and other materials affecting your water flow and causing drain blockages is undoubtedly worth considering.
If not dealt with effectively, you could be setting yourself up for much bigger problems in the long term. Talk to a company that knows its subject and has experience of common issues faced by commercial kitchens.
Working With a Pro
Aside from regular grease trap cleaning, you should consider using a professional company to clean your traps. If you go down this road, expect the grease trap cleaning professional to use a pump. This removes any grease from your traps so that any accumulated grease is removed.
The technician will also measure the amount of grease and compare it to how much you had the last time your traps were cleaned.
Why? Because if the amount they measure is 25% more than the last time, you may be required to clean your traps more regularly.
Your technician will then give you a FOG report.
Once your trap has been completely pumped out, the technician should complete a FOG report and give you a copy.
By working with the grease trap pumping professionals, you are ensuring that your commercial kitchen is industry compliant by establishing a more professional and regular approach to your grease trap maintenance.
Ask the company you work with to train your kitchen staff to clean the grease trap properly. Also, consider employing a professional drain cleaning firm to keep your drains grease-free.
Taking this simple step will significantly improve the longevity of your plumbing system. The professionals can remove grease and other dirt that, if left, could lead to broken pipes and high costs.
Proper Maintenance = Happier Environment
We’ve all read about the increased prevalence of how trapped grease collects in drains, creating large fatbergs that block toilets and damage or break pipes. Why contribute to that problem when you can be part of the solution?
Apart from not pouring grease down the drain and regular grease trap cleaning, you can also recycle your grease. If you don’t want to throw the grease you’ve scraped from your pans into the trash, filter, and strain it.
It’s another way of saving money. Cooking oil that’s been filtered well can last weeks.
Alternatively, you can sell your excess recycled cooking oil to recyclers. By doing this, you can make a bit of extra money for your business due to your environmentally friendly approach to grease trap maintenance.
Are You Ready to up Your Grease Trap Maintenance Game?
We’re happy to answer any questions you may have about your restaurant, hospital, cafe, or bar’s drain problems. If you want to know more about how The Drain Strainer™ can help your grease trap maintenance program, please get in touch.
We will be happy to offer you the best solution to your grease trap problems.