Grease Trap Records, Manifests, and the Any-Time Inspection

What the city can ask for

Sec. 28-907 requires grease equipment to be kept “readily and easily accessible for observation, maintenance, operation, sampling, cleaning and inspection,” and lets the city inspect at any time. The practical translation: an inspector may ask to see the trap and may ask how it has been maintained. A blocked lid is a finding on its own. An empty maintenance history is a worse one.

The one-folder system

• Service receipts — dated, with trap size and gallons removed. A receipt that says “cleaned” without gallons is a receipt for a skim.
• Disposal manifests — the document showing where the waste went and that a licensed facility took it. Your vendor should hand you one every visit without being asked.
• Your interval worksheet — the calculator output for your trap, so the schedule has a rationale when someone asks why it is what it is.
• Equipment paperwork — trap size, installation date, any correspondence with DPU about required facilities.
• Incident notes — any overflow, with the date, what was done, and whether DPU was notified (within 24 hours at (804) 646-3000 for a release that reached the sewer).

Why this matters more in Richmond than in a 90-day city

In a city with a fixed interval, the receipt proves you met the calendar. In Richmond the standard is the discharge itself, which nobody can see — so the record is the only evidence that the machine producing the discharge was maintained in a way that could meet it. Full-evacuation receipts with gallons, on an interval that matches the trap, are what a reasonable maintenance history looks like.

What we give you every visit

A dated receipt with unit size and gallons removed, the disposal manifest, and a note of anything we saw — a cracked tee, a lid that does not seat, a trap that filled faster than the interval predicted. File it. It is thirty seconds of effort that answers the inspection before it starts.