Grease Trap Maintenance With Your Reliable Plumbing Service Provider | Atlanta, GA
A grease trap is essential for any commercial or residential kitchen. If your kitchen doesn’t have the accumulating grease, it could cause lots of problems at your home or even restaurant/place of business. For instance, if the grease finds its way into your drains, it will cause clogs down the drains, resulting in the backflowing of wastewater into your kitchen and causing various sanitation-related issues. As if that is not bad, this could make your business lose its reputation, which had taken years to build. Thus, it is smart that you install grease traps in your kitchen and ensure that a reliable plumbing service provider maintains them to ensure they are in optimal condition.
What Are Grease Traps?
The grease trap is a plumbing fixture that does exactly as its name suggests. They are installed below the dishwashers and kitchen sinks to trap fats, oils, and grease (FOG) before they reach the deeper parts of your drains. However, installing the grease traps isn’t enough. Like any other component or fixture in your plumbing system, the grease traps also require maintenance from a plumbing service provider. Unfortunately, failure to maintain the grease traps could result in your local municipal authority shutting down your restaurant, resulting in a loss of revenue.
Additionally, the foul odors could make you fail the health inspection, resulting in the closure of your business. As you can see, maintaining your grease traps is critical, whether you own a busy commercial or a small residential kitchen. But what does the maintenance of this plumbing component entail?
Elements of Grease Trap Maintenance
When the plumbing service provider comes to your home for a grease trap maintenance visit, they will carry out either of the following:
Inspection of the Grease Traps
Inspection is an essential part of any plumbing service. It allows the plumber to know the conditions of the plumbing component or fixture and tailor a maintenance plan that works. For instance, an inspection of your drains can be used to determine whether hydro jetting will be effective or will result in more issues. In a similar sense, inspecting your grease traps can be essential in determining whether there are any developing issues. It also helps you determine how full the trap is and whether the time for emptying it is due. Inspecting every part of the trap is required to maintain the grease trap and ensure it is in optimal condition. Depending on the trap’s location, the plumbing service provider should open it and check for leaks, rusting, flow, fullness level, and other signs of issues. Inspections ensure that developing issues are caught before they worsen and precipitate replacements.
Grease Trap Cleaning
Removing oil buildup from a grease trap is an important maintenance task for any drainage system. If it is not properly maintained, it can cause water damage within your kitchen and other areas of your business or home. Although you can clean the grease trap yourself using tepid water and dish soap to clear the excess fat, oil, and grease, that is usually not recommended. First, the grease trap might collect germs and bacteria that could endanger your health and your family members. Rather, you should have a plumbing service in grease trap cleaning. The plumbing expert will professionally clean and disinfect your grease traps if needed. This cleaning is good enough to eliminate offensive odors in your home.
Scraping Your Plates
Another way to maintain your grease traps is to scrap any food particles and grease off your utensils before putting them in the dishwasher or sink. In most instances, the food scraps left behind could get into your sink, further clogging down the drains. Water will start backing up your toilets and kitchen drains whenever this happens. You also might start noticing foul smells whenever you pass near a sink. Thus, a plumbing service provider should clean the drains to ensure a proper wastewater flow. Additionally, if these food particles find their way into the grease traps, they fill them faster, meaning you must regularly have them cleaned. Ensure you scrape off the dishes’ residue before putting them in the sink.
Installing Screens Under Sinks
The best way to prevent food scraps and other greasy residues from entering the drains is to have a plumbing service provider install screens under your sinks. Installing the screens under your three-compartment and pre-rinse sinks could greatly benefit your drains and grease traps. They ensure that any grease that could have found its way into your drainage system runs underwater and is cleaned to allow only its trace amounts to flow through the drains and into the grease traps.
Clean Any Spills
There will occasionally be a few spills from your sinks in a commercial kitchen or a single-family home. However, you always need to ensure that these spills are cleaned immediately. You should also give your plumbing, such as kitchen sinks and drains, a regular maintenance service.
Properly Installing the Grease Traps
It is very important to have a grease trap installed properly in a kitchen; if not, problems can arise. Such problems include foul smells and drainage backflows. Hence, you should always hire a reliable plumbing service provider to install your grease trap, get it working correctly, and teach you how to maintain it. Further, the technician should come for grease trap cleaning. Remember, an incorrectly installed grease trap will not function efficiently, increasing the chances of a plumbing issue.
Call Us!
At Peach Plumbing & Drain, we understand that cleaning and maintaining your grease trap could prove challenging and tedious, albeit crucial. Do you need help with your grease traps? We can help. We offer services such as backflow control, grease trap installation, and cleaning, among other services. So, do you want grease trap cleaning, installation, and other maintenance services? Contact our reliable and friendly team and make an appointment. We will give you a free consultation and estimate.
See our previous blog on this topic here.