7 Tips to Avoid Greasy Drain Clogs in Your Restaurant, Pub or Cafe

For restaurant, pub and café owners, grease clogs tend to be one of the most common causes of blocked drains. If you own or manage one of these establishments, it's important to know how to avoid these clogs. Take a look at these seven essential tips.

Your first line of defence against a grease clog is a trap. By law, all establishments that serve food in Melbourne must have a grease trap professionally installed. You need to ensure that your trap is sized appropriately for your waste management needs.

You also need to get the trap serviced regularly. During servicing, professionals remove the solidified grease from the trap so that it can continue to catch more grease. Failure to service your grease trap can result in the trap overfilling, and at that point, excess grease will sneak around the trap and cause clogs deeper in the pipe system.

Although grease traps help to catch a lot of the grease that gets thrown down the drain, traps are not foolproof. To reduce the pressure on your trap, train your staff to scrape as much greasy food as possible from plates or pans into the garbage bin.

Also, do not pour old fryer grease down the drain-always recycle or throw that out in the garbage bin.

Occasionally, you may need to put some grease down the drain. Make sure the grease is not hot. Hot grease is more liquid than cool grease, and as a result, it can slip past the sides of the grease trap.

Once past the trap, it may cool. At that point, it may become less viscous or even solid, causing a clog. That can lead to backups throughout your entire system. You face the same risks with emulsified grease.

If possible, don't let your dishwasher drain into the drains that have the grease traps attached to them. The water that drains out of a dishwasher tends to be hot and full of grease and debris.

Again, when the grease is hot, it may slip past the grease trap and eventually lead to a clog. If your dishwasher already leads to a drain with a grease trap attached, just take extra caution to wipe the grease off the plates and pans before washing them.

Typically, a lot of the pipes in your establishment are connected. If you get a clog in one area, it can affect how all the other drains in your eatery work. For instance, if a grease clog occurs in a drain in your kitchen, that water may be diverted to other pipes, and eventually, the clog can spread to other areas, causing your toilets to back up or other issues to occur.

To avoid flooding or other clog-related issues from becoming out of control, you need to contact a drain repair specialist as soon as you notice any issues.

In some cases, you may want to be proactive about your drains. Remember that even the best grease traps don't stop all grease from getting into the system. To that end, you may want to have your drains cleaned to remove any built up oil before they lead to a clog.

To get help with your restaurant's drain, contact Reservoir Maintenance Contractors (RMC). We offer drain cleaning and maintenance, as well as emergency repairs and other services. Give us a call today.