Ye olde fat interceptor

[Nobbyone]

Hi. I work as a maintenance guy at a dementia care home. I have a fat trap issue that I hope that you can help with.

We have a doulton london fat interceptor which I believe is missing something to make it work correctly. There is a ridge that appears to do/hold nothing.

The modern fat traps seperate the trap into fat free and fat storage areas with a pipe allowing water to pass from the fat store to the fat free side. Mine doesn't.

I have attached some images. Due to the age of the building and its layout I would have to partly bury any new trap meaning chopping out the old one. Ideally I would make the old doulton one work better if possible.

Is it working as it was designed to do or is it missing something?

 

[Chuck]

I think that there should be a mesh screen, probably formed into a basket with handles so it can be lifted out for emptying that sits on the ledge. The fat floats and collects above/in this and the FOG-free water drains out from below. I'd expect there to be a second strainer, to deal with solids that sink rather than float somewhere. Possibly a cylindrical basket sitting below the smaller circular cover but they are usually on the inlet side.

In priniciple, you might be able to get a replacement made by a 'metal fabricator'. In practice this could cost almost as much as getting a modern replacement for the whole thing, which I think would probably be the right thing to do in this case.