Overview

Grease lines for commercial restaurants and kitchens mainly become blocked due to a buildup of grease through a lack of maintenance and lack of training or knowledge on the user’s part.

Grease, when poured down a drain, is usually hot or warm and is in a liquid state. As it cools inside the piping it becomes solid and sticks to the walls of the pipe. If this is repeated over and over again hundreds of times a day then grease build up doesn’t take long to block and reduce the internal diameter of the drain.

It is unavoidable in some instances due to the nature of the industry but with proper training or just making employees aware of the issue you can reduce the amount of grease in the system. Commercial kitchens can be a fast paced pressure cooker of a place when busy but just by leaving hot plates or scrap food dishes till the fats, oils and grease cool and then scraping them into the bin can save your drains from constantly clogging up.

Along with fats, oils and grease these kitchen restaurant lines have to cope with enormous amounts of little food scraps that find their way into drains. They can block sink traps and floor waste gullies in the ground. One of the ways to deal with this is to install bucket and basket traps which effectively catch most food scraps. These can be very convenient in reducing the load on the waste water system. They are just an insert that looks like a bucket or basket that goes inside the drain allowing water to pass through it but not food scraps. These, however, have to be cleaned on a regular basis otherwise buildup of food scraps can cause blockages or slow draining, unhygienic environments and bad odours.

Maintaining the drains through a regular cleaning schedule is a great way to reduce the risk of having a major blockage issue resulting in loss of business.

Another important factor in your waste water drainage system is grease trap arrestors.

They are a pit usually outside the building with baffles in it. It is designed to collect grease and oily wastes by flotation, coagulation and to settle solid materials as sludge. This prevents these materials from discharging into the sewer system. Every commercial kitchen should have one of these and it is the shop owner's responsibility to ensure they are pumped out on a regular basis.