Domestic grease trap?

[Tim Downie]

I normally try not to put any fat down our sink and when I do, I make sure I use plenty of detergent & hot water but I was a bit horrified when our drains were dug up (for an extension, not for blockage) to see this.

'm going to be a *lot* more careful in the future but given that everything is getting revamped, I was wondering about a grease trap for the drain. A quick seach just seems to throw up catering sized traps. Are there any smaller ones for domestic use?

Tim

[Frank Erskine]

our local water company, they showed me a waste pipe about 4 feet diameter, a lot of which was fed from a potato crisp factory. Without exaggeration, there was a layer of grey solid grease some 18 inches thick, which regularly blocked the pipe.

The difficulty the water company had was that the pipe had been largely paid for by the above factory.

[Stuart Noble]

Better to leave fat to cool and then bin it I would have thought. Oil and detergent is ok though. Oil or fat plus caustic soda equals soap with a greatly increased volume and, being only slowly soluble, it can create more of a blockage initially.

[Tim Downie]

Don't think I ever suggested to the contrary. ;-)

Can't see any chemical agent being any good on a pipe that size when everything you chuck down the drain will flow through the hole at the bottom. Although I've no intensions of chucking any quantities of fat down the drains there's always likely to be *some* that goes down so I'd still be interested in a domestic grease trap.

Tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

Now you know why I tip caustic down at regular intervals.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Can't see why you'd need to. You don't have to put insoluble fat down a drain. If you don't keep it for re-use - as our parents or grandparents used to do - put it in a container and out with the rubbish.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There is always some tip off that is too contaminated for reuse.

Anyway my grandmother used to keep everything and every time I ate her 'left overs' I had the squits for a week.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I doubt from any fat kept. By nature it is heated to a point where nothing survives.

[4square]

=A0 London SW

I once heard that at Bradford sewage works, they use to collect so much lanolin and fat from the local wool-processing factories, that it was mixed with something - paraffin? - and used to fire the steam locos. which were used on the works railway. Nothing new about power from waste!