Grease Traps & Commercial Kitchen Drains

Why kitchen grease is a plumbing problem, not a cleaning problem

Fats, oils, and grease leave the dish sink as warm liquid and become solid the moment they cool — which happens inside your drain lines, layer by layer, service after service. Multiply a home kitchen's grease output by a hundred covers a night and you get the commercial reality: lines that narrow steadily until a Friday rush finds the choke point. Municipal sewer departments care too, because grease that escapes your building builds the same blockages in the public main, which is why grease control is regulated rather than optional.

How a grease interceptor actually works

A grease trap or interceptor is a baffled tank between the kitchen's fixtures and the sanitary sewer that slows the flow so physics can work: grease floats to the top, food solids settle to the bottom, and clarified water exits from the middle. Under-counter traps serve a sink or two; larger in-ground interceptors serve the whole kitchen. None of them destroy grease — they store it. Which means every interceptor has a capacity, a fill rate, and a pumping schedule, whether or not anyone is honoring it.

The maintenance rhythm that keeps you open

The working rule of thumb across the industry is to pump an interceptor when the combined grease and solids layers reach about a quarter of its depth — for many kitchens that is quarterly, for high-volume operations more often. Between pumpings, the cheap wins are operational: dry-scrape plates before the sink, keep fryer oil going to the recycler rather than the drain, and strainer-basket everything. Downstream, periodic hydro jetting of the kitchen's drain lines strips the buildup that gets past the trap before it becomes the Saturday-night backup.

The compliance side: manifests and inspections

Most municipalities require food-service operations to size interceptors to code, pump them on schedule, and keep pumping manifests available for inspection — and a sewer-department inspector following a grease blockage upstream to your building is a bad way to learn the rules. Undersized or bypassed traps discovered during a remodel or inspection become mandatory upgrades on the city's timeline instead of yours. If you are opening, expanding, or inheriting a kitchen, getting the interceptor question answered early is far cheaper than retrofitting it under order.

Where Hanna fits in your kitchen

We handle the plumbing side of grease management for Corridor restaurants and commercial kitchens: sizing and installing interceptors during builds and remodels, jetting kitchen drain lines on maintenance schedules, and responding 24/7 when a backup threatens service — restaurants like Firehouse Subs and Culver's are among the commercial projects on our books. Hourly commission-free techs, licensed and insured, one-year workmanship warranty. Tell us your kitchen's volume and layout, and you will get a maintenance rhythm sized to it, not a one-size contract.