As a restaurant owner, you want your customers to feel comfortable and enjoy their meals. You can have an eco-friendly approach by starting to take care of your restaurant’s drains and sewer lines so they don’t get clogged or cause any foul odor.
In this article, we’ll cover three steps that you need to take before any clogging or sewer line backup happens. Apart from this, it will also explain why such blockages happen and what you can do to prevent them.
Why Do Kitchen Drains Get Clogged?
Let’s start with the most asked question: Why does clogging happen in a restaurant and what’s the main cause? If you’re familiar with working in a kitchen, you know that fat, oil, and grease – also known as Food Service Establishments (FOG) – are an inseparable part of the kitchen.
FOG can lead to sewer floods whenever these products are not properly disposed of. Once these liquids are hot and poured down the drain, they cool down and get stuck to the sides of pipes. Additionally, the water can’t go through the pipes smoothly, so it causes slow draining.
Similarly, this also happens when you’re washing the dishes, and any food scraps go down the drain. This causes buildup and an insufferable odor. Sometimes, the backup might happen in other places besides the kitchen.
How to Know if Your Restaurant is Experiencing a Sewer Backup
After the clogging, there comes another blockage – sewer backup. Once the pipes are clogged due to FOG or food scraps, this can cause more buildup or even worse, food contamination. If the latter happens, your restaurant is over. Sewer backup includes contaminants such as E. coli, hepatitis A, norovirus, and so on.
Sewer backup is not only bad for the food you serve, but the water that goes through those pipes gets contaminated with parasites, chemicals, and different toxins. Also, if your employees or customers are exposed to these contaminants, they could be endangered and get sick.
So, how can you prevent any clogging or sewer line backup? Well, we’ll show you the three most important steps you can take so that your restaurant and kitchen can work properly.
1. Regular Sewer Line Cleaning
It goes without saying that your restaurant needs a routine cleanup, especially for a sewer line. If you haven’t cleaned your sewer pipes in a long time, you’ve probably encountered a slow-draining sink or toilet. The best thing you can do is get some expert help beforehand and clean out any buildup, preventing sewer line backup.
Nowadays, you can find many professional companies who inspect clog problems, and they have all the necessary equipment. Usually, they might use water jetting or snaking to clear out the clog.
2. The hot water trick
This is an old but useful trick that many restaurant owners do – putting hot boiling water down the drain almost every night so that the pipes don’t get clogged and the sewer doesn’t back up. The benefits of the boiling water are that it improves the flow of the water and it breaks down any debris.
3. Educate your kitchen staff
Every now and then, it’s always a good thing to remind your kitchen staff to put the food scraps directly into the garbage cans. Additionally, make sure you place drain strainers that catch small food bits so they don’t make it down the pipes. Another great tip is to use paper towels to wipe down the oils and grease from the dishes and then disposing of it in the trash can.
Article Submitted By Community Writer
