A grease interceptor in your home protects your pipes from clogs. However, when the grease interceptor gets full, it can longer protect those pipes and you will have a very costly repair on your hands soon after. This is bad news for homeowners who may not realize that there is a grease trap outside, perhaps under your home, that is getting full every time you wash dishes or pour grease down the sink. Have you checked out your grease interceptor lately? If not, don’t you think it is about time to do so?
The Reason for Periodic Checks
Have you ever really thought about the things that may go down your sink? Even if you scrape your dishes really well before you rinse them off, you are still putting things down the drain that are thicker than water, especially if you cook with grease or eat greasy foods. Hamburger meat, sausage, bacon and other fatty foods have grease that gets hard when it cools off. Even though you may rinse them in hot water, sooner or later, you can expect for it to chill down enough to get firm again. This is mostly due to the fact that every joint in the pipes under your home will catch it and hold it. A grease trap is a trap that is placed between the sink drain and a pipe connector. Therefore, your trap will catch that grease before it can get hung up in other areas. Over time, because grease does not float good, it will feel up the interceptor and as that happens, more grease will be allowed to flow into the pipes. This is not going to be good news when you have a clog. Plumbers are not cheap and most homeowners do not enjoy the idea of doing it themselves.
How Often Should It Be Checked?
The answer to how often will vary depending on your lifestyle. A restaurant may need to check the grease interceptor every couple months, a home that does not have much fat going down the drain can clean it out much less, and the average homeowner should probably check it every six to eight months. Even if you do not eat meats that are fatty, you still have other things that go down the drain. Margarine can harden when chilled, hair and soap that gets flushed down the drain can cause issues, and of course food particles, even really small ones may cause a potential problem as time goes on. The longer you wait, the more you are taking a chance with your pipes.
What If Its Full?
If you find that your grease interceptor is full of yucky stuff, you should be able to just take it off and flush it out with a garden hose. However, you do want to make sure that you dispose of it properly. The grease and stuff is not something you want to keep near your home. This means you may want to ask around and find out if there are alternative ways to getting rid of the stuff that comes out of your grease trap.
