How Often Should I Be Cleaning My Grease Traps?

With a busy restaurant, it can be a chaotic environment. From cooking food, managing tables, cleaning up spills, and washing dishes, the list is never-ending. So what tends to be further down the list of priorities? Cleaning your grease traps, of course. However, it’s very much necessary to clean them out, but how often is necessary? Let’s find out.

What do grease traps do?

Many businesses that own food venues and have External link opens in new tab or windowgrease traps won’t necessarily know when it’s the right time to pump-out or clean them until it’s too late. The cleaning schedule will depend on the trap size, the business and cooking techniques that contribute to the grease build-up, and more. Grease traps are a plumbing device that is designed in order to stop most greases and solids from entering your wastewater disposal system. This can be helpful in avoiding major plumbing problems that could result in high costs for you to fork out as a business.


Set Up A Cleaning Schedule

It’s worth using the common rule of doing it every one to three months. Depending on whether that’s one or three, it’s good to also look at the 1/4th rule. This means that once your grease trap is a ¼ full, then you’ll want to empty it out. You could find that it fills up fairly quickly or that you can wait until three months or more down the line until you need to empty it out. A cleaning schedule, regardless, is going to be helpful in making sure it’s something that you don’t easily forget about.


You also want to avoid it going over the ¼ mark because it’s going to stop being as effective and will likely produce some frankly disgusting odors that can be unpleasant to have wafting into your business premises. By law, you’re meant to legally clean out your grease trap every 90 days.


Limit The Amount Of Food & Grease

When it comes to cleaning up your utensils and crockery, avoid putting it down the drain. Instead, wipe this debris and grease into the relevant bins be vigilant. Make sure all your staff is following suit and that you have these practices set up formally so that everyone is contributing less waste and grease down into the drains and your grease traps.


Recycle Cooking Oils

Any cooking oils can easily be recycled, and they’re much better recycled than they are when it comes to pouring them down the drain. It’s worth looking at schemes or organizations that regularly collect cooking oils from businesses.


Use Any Useful Chemicals

Not all chemical products are going to be handy (or safe), but you might be able to find some that prove useful in getting rid of a lot of the grease. This might perhaps slow down the number of times you have to clear out your grease traps or the level you have to deal with.


Look after your grease traps, otherwise, if you avoid doing them, you could face fines as well as lots of unsatisfied customers due to the smell it causes.