How to Clean a Grease Trap

Badly maintained grease trap

In order to keep your grease trap working properly to prevent grease buildup, regular cleaning is essential. If a grease trap is not well maintained, it will not work efficiently. Luckily, properly caring for your grease trap isn't extremely difficult or time consuming.

Things You'll Need

• Rubber gloves
• Strainer
• Flexible Probe
• Scraper
• Nose plug

Instructions

1. When beginning to clean your grease trap, completely and carefully remove the cover. Being careful is essential because if you aren't, you run the risk of damaging the gasket. Next spoon off the layer of oil and grease that is floating on top of the water in the trap. Place it into a garbage can lined with several garbage bags.

2. Next, remove the baffles, clean them, then rinse them off. You will then want to scrape clean the bottom of the grease trap using a strainer. This will remove any debris or particles that did not float to the top of the water. The last thing you will clean is the bypass vent, do this with a flexible probe. When you are finished, carefully place the baffles in their proper position and put the cover back on.

3. The next step in the cleaning process is to dispose of the used grease. If you are using a large in-ground grease trap, you may need to have it cleaned by a contractor who can dispose of such large quantities of grease and debris. In all other cases, you should be able to dispose of the grease at your local dump.

Tips & Warnings

• Cleaning a grease trap is without a doubt an unpleasant task, but it is necessary and before you make the same mistake i did here is an important warning. Adding a cleaning agent will not help clean the grease trap faster; in fact, cleaning agents can harm the natural bacteria present in grease traps that helps to eat the grease.