Get your grease out of our pumps!!!

Since 1977 FM Environmental Ltd have supplied pumps and pumping stations to thousands of sites across Ireland, the UK and beyond. Every week FM Engineers stumble across pumps clogged with fats, oils and grease.

A pumping station acts as a natural grease trap giving wastewater plenty of time to separate out into water and fat before being pumped away. Over time these pumping station become overpowered by grease damaging the pumps themselves and the floats and sensors that ensure the pump works correctly.

In many cases the source of the grease is from multiple sites including restaurants and hotels in one area and in other cases the station is on site and directly fed by the waste from the premises. Most of the times a grease interceptor has been installed however it is unlikely that the trap has been emptied in accordance with guidelines.

“They never empty the grease trap when they are supposed to” explains Tomasz Kozlowski , FM Service Technician. As a result grease escapes from the grease interceptor and ends up in the pumping station.

One of the problems is that staff doesn’t know when a grease interceptor is to be emptied and wait until a problem occurs, such as a pump station failure, before taking action. Many get the pump station serviced and the grease trap emptied at the same time, however a pump station may only require a visit once a year but the grease trap should get emptied once a month.

Even if the pump station continues to operate it is likely loosing efficiency as a result of grease build up.  It will also pump a lot of grease to the sewer network adding and contributing to municipal blockages. Too much grease and the pump can fail. If you are a hotel with a few hundred wedding guests needing to use the bathroom without the pumping station working then disaster will strike.

Check that they are sized correctly and emptied once a month. If you have no grease interceptor installed, get one. A grease removal unit like the Grease Guardian is installed inside at the source of the problem and performance is monitored on a daily bases. Grease separators outside can be easily forgotten about.

Grease build up in pumping station