Your restaurant’s grease trap provides a remarkable service for your business. It keeps smells from destroying the appetites of your guests, and prevents sewage related disasters from occurring because of a grease build up in your sewage pipes.
These perks come at a price however, the grease trap needs to be cleaned regularly in order to benefit fully from its usefulness. You don’t want to be forced to close your restaurant to deal with the problems caused by a nonfunctional grease trap.
If you’re not sure whether your kitchen grease trap needs cleaned, here are 3 classic signs it needs done.
Clogged Drains
When you rinse out a sink does it take forever to drain? Do the drains clog frequently? The problem could be the grease trap. One of the first signs of a grease trap in need of cleaning is the pipes getting gummed up with grease that is no longer being filtered by the trap. This might not necessarily mean a blocked pipe, but the pipes may just drain more slowly.
A slow drain can be caused by a lot of other things too, but if you haven’t checked your grease trap in a while (or ever) you may want to give your grease trap a check.
A Bad Smell
If you get a bad smell on top of a clogged drain, your grease trap could definitely be the culprit. Grease traps are a vital part of keeping unsavory smells down in the pipes where they belong. Since the grease trap’s job is to keep grease from backing up your sewer lines, if you smell sewage in your kitchens, it once again could be the grease trap.
If you do smell an unpleasant odor, it’s important to get your grease trap checked right away. Continuing to neglect it could lead to a serious problem, such as your sewage line getting blocked with grease, which could lead to much bigger problems in your kitchens;.
Grease in weird places
You found grease congealing at the bottom of your sink in the morning, but the kitchen was scrubbed spotless last night. Someone slips on a grease puddle on the floor, but nobody remembers spilling anything. These may not be kitchen mistakes. They may actually be a sign that your grease trap is too full and needs to be emptied.
When your grease trap is too full, pipes can get plugged up, leaving nowhere for the grease to go. As the grease piles up, the grease ends up backing up where ever it can—and it will choose the path of least resistance. That could mean a drain in your floor, or the sparkling sink from the night before.
Getting your kitchen’s grease trap clean should be part of your regular maintenance. If you can’t remember when it was last cleaned, chances are it is due again. Getting it cleaned can avoid painful and expensive problems later, such as shutting down your business due to complications from a non-functional trap. Most commercial building cleaning companies provide such services so if you if you are skeptical you may need a cleaning, it’s definitely time to call one.