The "Grease Trap" Pandora's Box is an understateme

[Harry Nutczak]

I am absolutely giddy over the fact that I now have a 1,500 gallon capacity grease trap, and it is located outside of my restaurant underground instead of under the dish area inside the building.

And I just had "Sanamax" (grease reclamation business) out yesterday to get my grease dumpster placed, and get a quote for my inline grease trap being emptied and serviced.
All it is going to cost me is $150.00 to get it pumped, and they even offered to subtract that cost from what I get paid from them purchasing my waste cooking oils.
The building that we purchased is only about 12 years old, and the grease reclamation service has no record of ever servicing this location! So we popped the tops on the trap yesterday, and saw it about 80%-90% full.

If any of you have never opened and cleaned a grease trap, do yourself a favor and get a service company to do it for you. You'll thank me for years to come.

A grease trap traps food scraps, and grease from entering and clogging your septic/sewer system. All this material putrefies, ferments, and stinks to a level of epic proportions.
Running grease down your drain with hot water does not solve any problems, it just creates them.

Next on the list is getting a septic service guy out there to "Water-Jet" my septic lines from the trap to the dish area. The lines may not need it, but I do not need any surprises in the middle of summer that could shut us down.

What do you guys do for a grease trap?
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Just remember that the toes you may step on during your climb to the top will also be attached to the a$$es you'll be forced to kiss on your way back down!

[Geronimo]

One of my jobs as a youth was at a local truck stop (restaurant) as a "grunt". Basically I did what the regular workers refused or didn't care to do.

Anyway, their grease trap was outside and although it wasn't very big, it was my first experience at vomiting due to smelling something.

Some 50 years later, I have yet to smell something so nasty
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Where rumors end and legend lives forever...

[Maniac]

it does not get anyworse than the smell of fermenting grease

did some work at a meat plant that had a 20,000 gallon custom trap...when they had it cleaned we would be "on another job"...if you know what i mean
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RF Smoker
20" disc
uds

[qfanatic01]

I WISH I had your new system Harry, I'm stuck with your old style and have the joy of cleaning out 5 gallons of fermenting puke every month or so. Sad to say I've gotten over the smell, it's the pain in the butt of moving the dishwasher from over top of it to access it that I don't look forward to. I also always snake the lines when I do it. I have skipped that step a couple of times and had to move the dishwasher twice. I grew up on a small farm and cleaning the barn in the spring is worse. Add ammonia to that stink, with your eyes burning to boot.
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The lessons are in the customer's criticism. They aren't always right. The rewards are their satisfaction.

[Harry Nutczak]

Typically zoning in this area requires a buried 1,500+ gallon grease trap only if you are on septic, if you are on city sewer like I am, they readily accept smaller the less expensive "Under-Sink" models.
I do not know why zoning does it this way, does anyone else know? Either way, I'm glad they spent the money to do this.

I have my own well, but city sewer, I get charged for sewer usage via the water meter put on my well. So if I water the grass, a pump gets dumped into the lake for irrigation or I pay through the nose for it.

The guys who originally built this place spent tons of money outfitting this place, much much more than they needed to.

I am the 4th owner of this building in 12 short years, the first 3 owners all died. 2 from cancer, one from drowning (the drowning guy got revived though)
The first two owners had very different but successful businesses, the third guy, well, nobody knows what the heck he was trying to do in a culinary sense.
But I clearly remember him visiting me at my restaurant and boldly telling me that he was going to put me out of business with his beef brisket. One of our customers overheard this mans claim and started laughing.
The funny thing was, his menu was not BBQ themed. It was sort of a "French peasant food" theme.

He told people that "Locals don't know what good food is" and that he is only catering to the more sophisticated tastes of our tourists from Chicago, New York, and other major metro areas.
Yeah, sure, great idea. NOT!
Especially since our tourist season is a brief 65-70 days in the summer. And when people visit our little northwoods getaway, they are looking for an experience like in the movie "The great outdoors" they want 96 ounce steaks, they want to stay in a flea-bitten log cabin with a leaky roof and an outhouse, they want to eat big food, comfort food, and to do it at reasonable prices, then get drunk, and hang out by a lake to watch our 10 PM sunsets and have Loons screeching at 4:30 AM to wake their hungover butts up too damn early for any good to come from it.
For those of you who know the movie I speak of....... yes, there is a "Paul Bunyans" restaurant just down the road from us. It's been there for more than 50 years and is a huge tourist attraction. http://www.paulbunyans.com/
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Just remember that the toes you may step on during your climb to the top will also be attached to the a$$es you'll be forced to kiss on your way back down!

[Harry Nutczak]

OMFG! WTF!
The grease trap was pumped out this morning by sanimax, and so much for me reaping the benefits of it being located outside. The entire damn restaurant smells of putrid foul rotted mammalian intestinal contents!

I unlocked the door, the smell hit me in the face, I turned around and emptied the contents of my stomach in the parking lot!

I have all the windows open, the exhaust hood running, my shirt pulled over my nose, and I hope to be able to get this smell out of here rapidly.

The stink must have came up through the P-Traps or something. I thought my cooler had died, then I remembered the trap service.
Alright, I gotta start filling drains to end this stink!
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Just remember that the toes you may step on during your climb to the top will also be attached to the a$$es you'll be forced to kiss on your way back down!

[Texman]

[Harry Nutczak]

[MooniesBBQ]

[Harry Nutczak]