Importance of Regular Restaurant Grease Trap Cleaning

Cleaning your restaurant grease trap has many benefits. Let’s have a brief look at some key reasons why you should not ignore restaurant grease trap cleaning.

1. Prevent clogging and backups

Regular cleaning of the restaurant's grease trap helps prevent clogging of drains, plumbing fixtures, and grease trap, and avoids backup issues. Fat, oil, and grease accumulate in the grease trap over time to form scum, and food particles present in the liquid waste settle at the bottom as sludge. If this sludge and scum are not removed from the tank on time, it can clog inlet drain, outlet drain, and stick to the crossover line. This results in clogs, backups, plumbing issues, overflowing grease traps, and plumbing emergencies. Grease trap cleaning involves removing this scum and sludge and ensuring the proper functioning of a grease trap.

2. Ensure hygiene

Regular grease traps cleaning ensure the hygiene of the workplace and avoid undesirable situations. If you ignore restaurant grease trap cleaning, it can cause hygiene issues. A poorly maintained grease trap results in overflowing kitchen sinks, which creates an unhealthy, undesirable, and unhygienic work environment. Your restaurant staff won’t stick around long if they feel their health is at risk. Also, customers won’t come to dine at such an unhygienic place. This would be the most undesirable situation for any owner.

3. Avoid costly repairs

Regular restaurant grease trap cleaning avoids costly repairs. Installing a new grease trap or fixing a damaged grease trap is an expensive affair. It may cost you few thousand dollars whereas restaurant grease trap cleaning would hardly cost you a few hundred dollars. More importantly, if your grease trap is not functioning properly, you have to fix it immediately as you cannot run your kitchen operations without a proper functioning grease trap and take risks of disposing of wastewater directly to the main sewer line.

4. Avoid fines

There are very strict laws in the United States for grease trap cleaning. If you found violating the law, you may attract penalties as high as $10,000. However, not all states penalize that high for the violation, but you can expect a minimum fine of $500. Regular cleaning can protect you from heavy penalties by local environmental protection authorities.

5. Prevent environmental issues

Regular restaurant grease trap cleaning prevents environmental issues. Your restaurant grease trap is connected directly to the main sewage system to dispose of treated wastewater. If untreated wastewater containing FOG disposed of directly to the main sewer line, it can cause damage to the main sewer line and could create issues at local water treatment facilities. If scum accumulated in the grease trap left unattended for a long time, it becomes thick and may begin to escape via outlet tee, block the downstream pipes, and clog the sewer lines, which eventually attract heavy penalties and create environmental issues. Regular grease trap cleaning avoids such issues.