Grease Trap Pumping in Lawrenceville, GA

Alcovy Septic handles grease trap pumping in Lawrenceville, GA and across Gwinnett for restaurants, cafeterias, bakeries, church kitchens and daycare kitchens. The trap gets emptied completely — liquid, floating grease and settled solids — measured against the 25 percent rule, and documented on a dated manifest you can hand to an inspector.

What the county expects

Gwinnett County set up a fats, oil and grease prevention program in 2000, run under a county FOG ordinance and backed by the federal Clean Water Act and the Georgia Water Quality Control Act. The county’s own description is direct: the ordinance “outlines steps restaurants and food service establishments must take to keep FOG out of the County’s system,” and county inspectors check that businesses are following it (Gwinnett County).

What the county’s public FOG page does not publish is a service frequency. So the working standard for scheduling comes from two places, and it is worth being clear about which is which:

• The 25 percent rule — a condition standard used across metro FOG programs. It says a trap is due when accumulated grease and solids reach a quarter of the trap’s operating depth, no matter what the calendar says.
• The City of Atlanta ordinance — the nearest published frequency floor in this metro. It is not Gwinnett law, but it is the number most operators and haulers work to because it is written down.

The 25 percent rule, measured properly

The rule has a real definition, not a guess. Under City of Atlanta Code § 154-297.03, the depth of oil and grease — floating and settled together — must not equal or exceed 25 percent of the total operating depth of the trap. Operating depth is measured from the outlet water elevation down to the bottom of the trap. The same section notes that floating grease alone should stay under 20 percent, because roughly five percent of the grease settles to the bottom.

That is why the crew measures before pumping and writes the number down. A trap reading 30 percent on a 90-day schedule needs a 60-day schedule; one reading 8 percent may be over-serviced.

Frequency: where the 90-day and 14-day numbers come from

The City of Atlanta ordinance requires outdoor grease traps to be maintained “not less than once every 90 days,” and indoor traps “at intervals no less than once every 14 days,” on top of the 25 percent rule (§ 154-297.03). Facilities operating only for occasional special events can be permitted on an event-based schedule.

Those are City of Atlanta numbers. Gwinnett has its own ordinance and its own inspectors, and its published page does not state a frequency — so treat 90 days outdoor and 14 days indoor as the defensible benchmark rather than a Gwinnett citation. If your kitchen is high-volume fry or heavy on a dishmachine, expect to be tighter than the floor. Our grease trap frequency guide goes deeper into how to defend your schedule.

Full pump-out, not skimming

A skim job removes the floating layer and leaves the sludge on the bottom, so the trap holds less every cycle and the invoice looks cheap until the line blocks.

The Atlanta ordinance is unusually explicit on this point: maintenance “shall include the complete removal of all contents, including floatable materials, wastewater, sludges, and solids,” and “top skimming of outdoor grease traps, decanting or back flushing of the grease trap or its wastes for the purpose of reducing the volume to be hauled is prohibited.” It also prohibits maintaining a trap by adding bacteria, enzymes or chemicals. That is the method standard we work to whether your building sits inside a city or in unincorporated Gwinnett.

If the trap is clean and the drains are still slow, the problem has moved into the pipe. That is a line jetting job, not another pump-out — the pumping vs cleaning vs jetting guide explains where the line falls.

Traps on septic vs traps on sewer

Two different risk pictures, same service:

On sewer. The trap protects the county collection system. Failure shows up as a sanitary sewer overflow and a compliance letter.

On septic. The trap protects your own drain field, the more expensive thing to lose. Grease past an interceptor floats on the tank’s scum layer, carries out the outlet and blinds the trench soil, and there is no rodding that back out — you buy a new field. Buildings on septic should run commercial septic pumping alongside trap service, with the effluent filter cleaned each visit and drain field repair only if it is already too late.

Records and manifests

Each visit should leave a manifest with the establishment name and address, the trap type and size, the date of service, the hauler, the total gallons removed and the disposal site. Atlanta’s ordinance requires those records be kept on site for three years and produced on request. DeKalb County’s FOG program points establishments to the Georgia EPD commercial waste manifest form for the same purpose.

Keep them in one binder near the kitchen office. The same file answers an inspector, a franchisor audit and a buyer’s questions if you ever sell the business.

What grease trap service costs

Homeyou’s September 2026 Atlanta-area data puts grease trap service at a typical range of $96 to $696. The spread is real: a 40-gallon under-sink unit and a 1,500-gallon outdoor interceptor are the same job description and very different work. Size, access, how overdue the trap is and whether the crew can get a truck within hose reach are what move the number.

You get a price range on the phone before anyone is scheduled, and work outside operating hours normally carries a 50 to 100 percent premium. Kitchens in Snellville, Lilburn, Grayson and Loganville are on the same routes as our septic work, so trap service and a tank pump-out can be scheduled on one visit. Send us the details and we will size the interval to your kitchen.