Grease Trap Cleaning
There is no national grease limit — your sewer authority writes it, and the numbers vary twelve-fold between cities.
Free to homeowners — the contractor pays us for the introduction, you never do.
The short form
Grease causes 47 percent of reported sewer blockages, and a single restaurant produces between 800 and 17,000 pounds a year. Federal law forbids obstruction but sets no number: the limit that binds a kitchen is written by its local sewer authority, and those limits vary twelve-fold.
Source: U.S. EPA, Fats, Oils and Grease from food service establishments, EPA-833-F-12-003; 40 CFR 403.5, National pretreatment standards: Prohibited discharges.
- You are never chargedContractors pay us when we route them a call. There is no cost to the homeowner, ever.
- Every figure names its sourceThe numbers on this site come from public data and the page says which, so you can check them.
- We say where we coverCalls are routed by ZIP code to independent contractors.See the coverage
- We say when not to callIf the fix is a few minutes of your own time, this site tells you that instead of selling you a visit.
For whoever is responsible for a commercial kitchen. Four things decide how this goes, and only one of them is the pumping schedule.
What this site is
InterceptorCall is a referral service, not a contractor. We connect operators and property managers with independent contractors. Contractors and waste haulers are required to hold whatever credential and permit their state or municipality demands — ask to see them, because the manifest they leave you is a compliance record. We carry out no work, we haul nothing, we do not set prices, and we never charge the caller anything. Nothing here states the grease limit, the pumping interval or the device size that applies to any particular kitchen; those are set by your control authority and by your installation.One: the rule that binds you is local
Federal law prohibits introducing to a sewer solid or viscous pollutants in amounts which will cause obstruction resulting in interference. It sets no grease number. The enforceable figure is written by your control authority, because the same regulation requires each POTW to develop and enforce its own specific limits.
EPA’s own training examples run from 50 to 600 milligrams per liter. Why a single national figure does not exist.
Source: 40 CFR 403.5, National pretreatment standards: Prohibited discharges; U.S. EPA, FOG Management and Control Program.
Two: the device works by letting grease cool
Grease floats, solids settle, and the outlet reaches into the band between them. Everything else — the tees, the baffle, the sizing, the schedule — is in service of that.
Which is why a dish machine at 140 to 180 degrees turns a working trap into a length of pipe without changing anything you can see. The most common expensive mistake in a commercial kitchen.
Three: a vessel can be on schedule and still failing
A missing inlet tee, a broken baffle, a disposal plumbed in, a vessel too small to stop short-circuiting or too large to stay aerobic. None of those are solved by pumping more often, and all of them are invisible from the lid.
The failures worth checking for, and why too big is a real problem too.
Four: the record is half the compliance
Manifests, service history and what an inspector actually looks at — including the manhole downstream of your connection, which does not care what your file says.
What to keep, and why the first letter is the one that costs least to answer.
The scale of the problem, in EPA’s figures
Source: U.S. EPA, Fats, Oils and Grease from food service establishments, EPA-833-F-12-003.
What we will not tell you
A grease limit, a pumping interval or a device size for your kitchen. The first is your ordinance, the second is usually your ordinance and always your loading, the third is a design calculation at plan review.
That refusal has its own page, along with the price and the compliance verdict we also decline to invent.
What the service is
We connect operators and property managers with independent contractors who cover their area, and the contractors pay us when we route them a call. You are never charged.
Everything published here
- The local ruleFederal law prohibits blocking a sewer but sets no grease number.
- Trap or interceptorOne sits under a sink and is rated in gallons per minute.
- How oftenThere is no national interval and we will not invent one.
- What goes wrongMissing tees, undersized vessels, the wrong things connected to it.
- The dishwasher problemA trap separates grease by letting it cool.
- SizingUndersizing lets grease short-circuit straight through.
- Yellow and brownFryer oil kept clean has value and a separate collection.
- The paperworkThe service is half the job.
- What we cannot tell you
- CostWe are not the contractor and cannot quote.
Where we route calls
Tap your state for the towns and ZIP codes we route in, and the figures behind them.
- Alabama
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this site is public and attributed. You can go and check any of them.
- HousingUS Census BureauAmerican Community Survey 5-year estimates — the housing figures on every town page, and the table each one comes from is named on the page.
- WaterUS Environmental Protection AgencyFederal drinking-water and plumbing rules, and the public water-system records behind the coverage pages.
What happens when you call
No form, no quote tool, no waiting for an email.
- You tell us what the water is doingOne short conversation. If it turns out to be something you can fix in five minutes, we will say so.
- We route the callWe match your ZIP code to an independent contractor who already covers your area — not a call center three states away.
- They quote, you decideWe do not set prices and we never charge you. The contractor pays us for the introduction.
What to do first
Four things worth doing first. They cost nothing and they can keep a small problem small.
- Shut off the water closest to the problemUnder a sink or behind a toilet there is usually a small valve on the supply line. Turning it clockwise stops that fixture without shutting off the rest of the house.
- If you cannot find it, use the mainUsually where the supply enters the building — a basement wall, a crawl space, or a covered box near the street. Then open the lowest tap in the house, which drains the standing water out of the pipes instead of out of the leak.
- Water and electricity: stay out of the roomIf water has reached an outlet, a panel or an appliance, switch that circuit off at the breaker before going near it. If you cannot do that safely, do not go in, and say so when you call.
- Photograph it before anything is movedInsurers ask for it, and a contractor can tell more from a photograph of the leak than from a description of it.
And one case where the answer is not to call us. If the water is surfacing on the street side of your meter, that is the utility's line and not yours. Report it to your water utility — they do not charge a homeowner to repair their own main.
Have the last manifest in front of you.Date, hauler, volume removed and where it went — it is the first thing anyone asks for and it tells a contractor more about the state of the vessel than a description does. We will route you to somebody who covers your area, identified from the ZIP code of the premises, and you are never charged. Other plumbing work at the premises can be arranged through the same call.
Call (888) 753-1770
