Grease Trap Compliance for Restaurant Operators: Sizing, Pump-Outs, and FOG Rules
Restaurant grease trap compliance runs on three layers of rules that most operators have never seen separated: a Florida statute that governs who may pump your trap and what paperwork proves it, a local pretreatment program that sets what you are actually inspected against, and a family of industry benchmarks on timing and trap depth that everyone quotes and few attribute. This guide walks all three layers for a Collier County kitchen, and ends with the one habit that decides most inspections: the records.
FOG stands for fats, oils, and grease, and a grease trap or interceptor is the tank that separates them from kitchen wastewater before it reaches the sewer. Collier County is blunt about why: FOG poured down drains "sticks to the inside of sewer pipes," and the buildup "restricts wastewater flow, eventually causing blockages" that back sewage up into buildings (Collier County, 2026). Compliance is the system of sizing, pump-outs, and paperwork that keeps your trap from becoming the county's problem.
Three layers of rules, and which one binds you
Florida sets the floor by statute: grease waste handling and disposal are governed by Section 403.0741, administered with Chapter 62-705 of the Florida Administrative Code (FDEP, 2026). The binding local layer in Collier County is the Industrial Pretreatment Program, whose stated goal is "to reduce the amount of FOG entering the sewer collection system" (Collier County, 2026).
The layering matters because each layer answers a different question. The statute answers who may pump your trap, where the waste may go, and what documents must exist. The local program answers what your specific kitchen is inspected against. Industry benchmarks answer neither; they are planning guidance until your local authority adopts them.
Collier County's FOG page publishes practices and a phone number rather than intervals, and that is the honest structure of the system: the binding local answer for your kitchen comes from the Pretreatment Program office itself, at 239-252-8607 or PreTreatment@collier.gov (Collier County, 2026). Call with your trap size in hand; the sections below explain what they will be talking about.
How grease trap sizing is actually set
Sizing is a permit-time engineering decision, not an operator choice: Florida's plumbing code sizes interceptors from the fixtures and flow that drain to them, and the calculation is run when the kitchen is permitted or remodeled. Operators inherit the number. What an operator controls is whether the trap installed decades ago still matches the menu running today.
That drift is the practical sizing problem. A trap sized for a sandwich shop does not fit the fryer line that moved in later, and an undersized trap fills to its working limit faster than any schedule assumes. The symptoms are familiar: odors, slow floor drains, a trap that is visibly full weeks after a pump-out.
The honest fixes run in order: pump more often, confirm the trap's actual size and condition against what the kitchen now sends it, and only then talk about replacement. A sizing conversation that starts from measurements, your interceptor's capacity and your service records, is short. One that starts from a backup is expensive.
Pump-out intervals and the twenty-five percent rule
The industry benchmark family: pump at least every 90 days, or sooner when grease and solids reach 25 percent of the trap's depth, whichever comes first (Grease Connections, 2026). That guide presents the benchmark as statewide plumbing-code practice; another is explicit that the binding backstop and inspection frequency are set by the local FOG ordinance, not state law (Grease Trap Locator FOG, 2026).
Both sources agree on the operative point: the local authority's number is the one you are inspected against, and in Collier County that answer comes from the Industrial Pretreatment Program (Collier County, 2026). Treat the benchmarks as the planning defaults they are, and your program's answer as the rule.
The depth trigger, pumping when grease and solids reach 25 percent of trap depth (Grease Connections, 2026), is the one worth internalizing, because it scales with your kitchen while the calendar does not. A high-volume fry operation can hit that depth in weeks. Measuring is simple: your hauler records grease and solids depth at each service, which is one more reason the manifest section below is the heart of this article.
The hauler rules that changed, and the scam they outlaw
Under Section 403.0741, a hauler "must dispose of the grease waste at a disposal facility" and may not return grease waste or graywater to your trap (Florida Legislature, 2026). Grease haulers are licensed under the state program, and food service establishments are expected to use licensed haulers for interceptor cleanings (FDEP, 2026).
The return ban outlaws a specific cheap-service scam: pumping the trap, skimming the sellable grease, and quietly discharging the graywater back in. The trap reads as serviced, the invoice is real, and the interceptor is still mostly full. If a quote is dramatically below every other quote in town, this is often where the discount comes from.
The statute also puts inspection teeth behind the paperwork: the department "shall periodically inspect the service manifests retained by a hauler" (Florida Legislature, 2026). Verifying that your hauler is licensed and that a manifest follows every service is not bureaucracy; it is the cheapest insurance in your compliance stack.
The records that save you
Every pump-out must generate a service manifest documenting removal and disposal, and "a copy of the signed completed service manifest must be retained onsite by the originator and the hauler for 1 year" (Florida Legislature, 2026). The originator is you: the statute names food service establishments, from restaurants and commercial kitchens to hotels and school kitchens, as the responsible party.
Build the file an inspector hopes to see: manifests in date order, grease depth readings per service, the hauler's license information, and a one-page log of staff scraping and dry-wiping practices. An operator who can produce that binder in ninety seconds has answered most inspection questions before they are asked.
The habit also protects you commercially. Manifests prove service frequency when a sewer blockage near your lateral raises questions, and depth readings are the data that justify a longer interval if your kitchen genuinely runs clean. Records are how a compliance cost becomes a negotiating position.
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PUBLISHED August 24, 2026 · WRITTEN BY JAMIE KLONCZ, FOUNDER · GREAT HERON PLUMBING