5 Ways to Save Money With a Professional Grease Trap Cleaning

By law, you are required to install a grease trap to capture all the FOG – fats, oils, and greases from your kitchen so that none gets to the sewerage system. But that is not all, because you are also required to properly maintain the FOG trap. By maintaining it, we mean the following things:

• Cleaning the tank in good time
• Repairing the trap and its accessories when need be
• Ensuring that the kitchen plumbing system is delivering all the water through the trap
• Ensuring none of the grease is going out to the sewerage system

Millions of pounds of grease find their way into the sewerage system every year. This causes blockages and costs the concerned authorities a lot of money to repair. Besides, it is also an environmental and health hazard, since blocked sewerage systems can back up effluent into the streets.

Now that you know the importance of a grease trap installation and maintenance, how can you save money on the grease trap service?

Here are five tested and proven ways:

1. Professional FOG trap cleaners save money

When you are in business, cutting costs is everything. Therefore, you might wrongly think that having one of your kitchen or other employees do the FOG tank cleaning is going to save money.

But this does not save money. To the contrary, you could end up spending more money because the person you get to do the job is not trained to do it. Many things could go wrong, including personal injury.

A professional FOG tank maintenance company has all the tools required for the job. For instance, they have a vacuum pump to pull out the FOG that floats on the water in the tank.

The lid of the FOG tank can fit in too tightly, and it can be impossible to pry open if you do not have the right tools. Again, your employees do not have these tools. In trying to force the lid open, you might end up breaking it, and in return, you will have to replace it with a new one.

When you let a trained team, most likely the same one that installed the grease tank, do the cleaning and the maintenance of the tank, you save time, money and much more. They know what to do, and when to do it. They will keep to a regular FOG tank maintenance schedule.

Signing a contract with a grease tank company takes this nasty, and hard job off your hands, completely. As long as the contract runs, they will show up on time, which can be a few times a year, depending on the size of the tank.

2. Do not allow the disposal of used cooking oil in the sinks

The FOG tank works in a very simple way. Water from the sinks flows to the tank, but the grease solidifies when it cools down. It is then trapped inside the tank while the water flows out to the sewerage system.

As more water gets inside the tank, more grease is captured and with time, it needs to be cleared out, probably when the tank is about three-quarters full.

However, the tank can fill up faster, if you allow your kitchen staff to pour used frying oil in its gallons down the sink. If the tank fills up too soon, it requires to be emptied. This means spending more money than necessary.

Make sure that the liquid cooking oil is collected in containers and then picked by the recycling company. Instead of pouring it down the drain, this oil can be a source of revenue for your business.

Depending on how busy the food business is, a grease tank needs emptying once every three months. However, this can quickly escalate to once every month if you are disposing used frying oil directly into the sinks.

3. Strain the food material out of the water going down the sink

Please put this tip to work immediately. Strain out the food material from the kitchen water so that none goes to the grease tank. If it finds its way there, it will contribute to filling up the tank faster.

There are many benefits of straining the water. First, there will be no food materials getting inside the kitchen plumbing system, which increases the risk of clogging.

Secondly, the grease trap is not going to fill up too fast when you have mostly water going through the sink. That means less frequent emptying of the tank.

The strainer for your sink should be cheap to buy, and you do not need professional help to install it. However, you have to keep removing the food particles that it traps so that they do not clog it up. Such can make your sink flood with dirty water.

4. Install a big grease tank

If you cook deep-fried food a lot, or you generally cook a lot, you should install a bigger grease trap. The smaller it is, the faster it will fill up and the more frequently it will require to be emptied. This is going to cost you more money.

If you are going into a fast food business, ask the grease interceptor installation company what size of tank would be appropriate for you.

Home use grease tanks can be the small, under the kitchen counter types. However, businesses require bigger tanks, located outside the kitchen.

5. Reuse your used cooking oil

If you can mind the types of food you are cooking in the fryer, it is possible to reuse your liquid cooking oil. For instance, if you have used the oil to cook seafood, you can reuse it to cook more seafood.

If you use the oil to cook chicken, reuse it for the same purpose, and so on. However, before reusing it, you should strain it to remove any food particles. Also, store the oil properly if you intend to reuse it, in clean and covered containers to prevent oxidation, odor development, or bacteria.

The more you reuse, the less wastage into the sinks there is, and the less need you have for cleaning the grease tank.

Conclusion

With good planning, and when you work with a good grease trap maintenance company like Grand Natural, you need not spend too much money on the exercise.

Sign a contract with one company and stay with them for the longest time possible. That way, you can ask for better rates, and save money on every evacuation.