Does Your Kitchen Have Odor Issues? Maybe It Needs Grease Trap Cleaning

Nothing could be more disconcerting than having strange odors seep into the kitchen, whether from the outside, the sinks or from the floor drains. Yet this is what happens when you ignore on-time grease trap service!

Managing a large kitchen can get so busy such that you forget to have the grease interceptor serviced on time. By the time you start experiencing strange odors in the kitchen, emptying is long overdue, and the grease has seriously started to back up.

The smells you are experiencing are from the hydrogen sulfide and sulfuric gases form when microbes start breaking down the grease.

What does a dirty grease trap smell like?

In the kitchen, there can be all types of smells. However, it will be hard to miss the rotten-egg smell coming from the grease tank. It is strong, and it permeates through the food and cooking smells, eventually enveloping everything. This stench is one of the ways to identify problems with the FOG trap.

Sometimes, you will not catch the smell from the kitchen, but you can feel it from the parking lot, or the outdoor spaces around the kitchen. If you experience a rotten egg smell, just know your grease tank is to blame.

As food material sinks into the bottom of the trap, it starts to rot because it is wet. Microbes, such as mold, yeast, and bacteria break down the organic waste, and they emit the nasty smelling gases.

The food material sinks into the bottom of the FOG tank, and the fats, oils, and grease settle on top of the water. As more used oil comes in, the grease becomes a good breeding ground for these microbes. The gases will leak through the smallest space, for instance, from the cover of the grease trap.

The smell is also indicative of a faulty grease trap

By the time you start experiencing the odor of the noxious gases in the kitchen, it means you have stayed too long before emptying and cleaning the tank.

But that is not all, because this can also be indicative of structural problems in the grease tank. For instance, these tanks are designed with a P-Trap, which creates a seal of water to contain the smells from the rotting grease.

However, if something is wrong with the P-Trap, the noxious gases start to escape, and permeate your space. This smell is likely to seep out through the kitchen sink.

Some parts of the grease tank can be poorly installed, too, causing serious issues. For instance, if the vent pipe is installed facing the sitting area of the restaurant or the parking lot, the smells will flow in that direction.

Emergency measures for eliminating grease trap smells

Before the proper grease trap inspection and maintenance is done, you need to contain the smell, especially if it is coming into the kitchen or going to the restaurant’s sitting area.

You need to deploy a few emergency measures to contain the smell, which are, luckily, not too hard. Try the following things:

Pour hot water down the kitchen sinks

This helps mostly when food materials have been stuck inside the drain pipes, causing this odor. To dislodge the stuck food material, oils, fats and greases, you should pour hot water down the drain, several times.

Keep pouring the hot water down, until you notice a difference. If the kitchen sinks were draining the water too slowly, the hot water might help with that. If the kitchen pipes are seriously clogged, consider hydro-jetting them to clear any clogging.

Use baking soda and vinegar

Baking soda and vinegar are perfect cleaning agents for emergency measures. Pour a cup of baking soda down the sink and leave it for 5 to 10 minutes. Then pour a cup of vinegar into the sink, let it bubble up for a few minutes.

You can then pour hot water down the sink. Mostly, that should take care of the noxious gas smells, at least until proper grease trap cleaning is done.

Use coarse salt

Pouring a half cup of coarse salt down the sink can help to dislodge stuck material in the pipes, because of its abrasive nature. If you are going to use salt, follow it up with the vinegar. Both of them will give you excellent cleaning power.

PLEASE NOTE: Do not use a drain cleaner, well, at least not until you speak to a plumber about it.

Clean the FOG interceptor on time, always!

Even if the emergency solutions for FOG trap smells help, the ultimate solution is to empty and clean the grease interceptor properly.

To understand the importance of this, you need to know how a grease tank works. It separates the food materials, grease, oils and the water. That way, the water flows out to the sewerage system while the grease remains behind, awaiting emptying. However, poor maintenance can impede its operation and cause the release of noxious smells.

The recommended cleaning interval is at least once a month, but cleaning it more than that is also okay, depending on the size of your business.

Some of the FOG tank parts are vulnerable to damage, such as the cover. Metal covers are affected by the acid that forms due to microbe activity. However, even if you have a plastic FOG trap, it can still develop cracks from which the odors will escape, and permeate the kitchen.

Do not pour disinfectant down the grease trap to help with the smell because soon after, the odor will come back. However, a thorough cleaning is going to keep the grease interceptor running as good as new. If there is a need for repairs, they will be taken care of before they can escalate.

The bottom line

Instead of having your kitchen staffs try to clean up the nasty grease trap odor by pouring hot water, vinegar, and baking soda down the sink, just ensure regular cleaning and maintenance. That way, you can put your employees to good use.

Contact Green Collection on 855-519-5550 for 24/7 consultation. If you are in our service area, we would like to help you with your grease collection, and make sure that everything runs smoothly all the time.

We use the modern technologies for emptying the grease, cleaning the trap, and repairing any anomalies. Our teams are professional, well-trained, and they replace everything properly. We will also keep to a clean grease collection schedule, and we will always leave your workplace neat.

In line with the grease trap cleaning, we can also provide you with clean bins for used cooking oil collection and recycling. 

Read More: How to Maintain Kitchen Hygiene With Used Cooking Oil