Drain Cleaning: Grease Requires Extra Attention from Technicianstest

By Dave Lubach, Associate Editor

February 2016

Facilities with kitchens and food service areas constantly combat buildups of grease from solidified fat and foods poured down drain lines, sometimes requiring technicians to perform cleanouts every few days.

“With kitchen sinks and drains, people have a tendency to want to go in with a snake-style machine or device to clear it out. They end up doing it every few days or weeks, and it just keeps reoccurring,” Dunbar says. “Grease has a tendency to clog the drain, and if you go down with a snake — something with a wide cutter on it — it will make a hole.” Unfortunately, the grease blockage often re-forms.

“If you are going back to it every few days to open this up again, it becomes quite a bother, so the right tool for that situation is a water jetter, a high-pressure water cleaner. When you go in with a camera — (taking) before-and-after shots on a grease-impacted drain — you find that you go through the water with a jetter and it looks like a perfectly new drain.”