The majority of restaurants in the Greater Richmond area have grease traps. A grease trap’s function is to collect the grease and kitchen waste and prevent it from getting into the main sewer lines. All of the bathrooms, toilets, and sinks run directly into the city’s main sewer line but the lines from the kitchen runs into your grease trap, which acts as a filter, and then ties into the city’s main sewer line.

How often do I need to pump my restaurant’s grease trap?
Pumping frequency depends on how much grease and waste your kitchen produces. Frequency can vary from once a week to once a year.

I have been getting fines and surcharges from my municipality for high grease readings, what should I do about it?
A municipality will charge you extra money for having too much grease in the sewer system. Municipalities will monitor the grease from your restaurant through a “monitoring manhole”, normally located close to your business. They will come and if the grease levels are too high, will charge you extra to deal with disposing of it.

If you have high surcharges, you will need to have your grease trap pumped more frequently. At Stamie Lyttle, we work with individual store locations to come up with a schedule that will help reduce and eliminate surcharges.

How do you clean a grease trap?
It is important when you have your grease trap cleaned to make sure that it is thoroughly cleaned, and not just emptied. When we clean a grease trap we also power wash the walls, Inlet-T’s and Outlet-T’s. This helps prevent grease from getting in the sewer system (reducing surcharges) and makes sure you don’t have a backup. We only leave about 3 inches of water in the tank, we don’t backfill your tank with “processed” water.

If the tank walls are not properly cleaned, when hot water enters the tank, it will dissolve some of the grease and send it into the sewer system, wasting the money you spent to have you grease trap cleaned.