A restaurant is one of those businesses most susceptible to plumbing problems, arising from clogged pipes and drainages that cause water back ups and overflows. Yet time and again, plumbers remind restaurant owners and managers that the root cause of their plumbing issues is the improper disposal of leftover food and other materials that go down into drains, which over time, eventually clog a restaurant’s plumbing system.
Training and Overseeing Restaurant Employees on Proper Disposal of Leftover Food
As food servers are often in a hurry to clear away tables for the next customers, some of the leftover food and paper napkins still end up in the sink. In most cases, the kitchen staff assigned to handle the dishwashing job will not bother to throw remnants into the garbage bin, since it’s much faster to let them go down the drain.
Bartenders can also be culprits, as some allow cocktail drink items like toothpicks, cherry stems, orange peels and lime wedges fall and slip into bar sink drains. Some even deliberately push them down in sink holes to easily and quickly complete their sink-cleaning chores.
Apparently, employees who do this are not knowledgeable on how plumbing systems work. Otherwise, they’ll have awareness of the problems that can happen to the restaurant’s plumbing system. Making sure kitchen and bar tending staff know and understand that plumbing systems can be affected by improper disposal of food wastes, should be part of work-training processes.
In San Diego, California restaurants, the most common plumbing problems that require immediate attention of an emergency plumber, are backups and overflows caused by clogged pipes and drainages. This is regardless of where the improperly disposed waste originated. Mainly because a restaurant building’s plumbing system is made up of a continuous sequence of pipes that perform different functions just like in residential houses.
Three Key Parts of a Plumbing System<.strong>
To fully understand the importance of proper waste disposal in sinks and toilets, restaurant managers and staff should know and understand that there are three key parts in a plumbing system, namely: the Potable Water system, the Sanitary Drainage and the Stormwater Drainage System.
Potable Water System
This is the part of the plumbing system that gives the people in the building, access to clean potable water to use for different purposes. Comprised of different pipes connected to the main plumbing system, a water valve is in place to cut off water supply when it becomes necessary to prevent water from flowing into a blocked pipe. Turning off the water valve can prevent water backups and/or overflows.
Sanitary Drainage System
The sanitary drainage of the plumbing system is responsible for removing wastewater from the building’s sanitation and toilet facilities. Made up of a series of pipes, they are configured in ways that specifically transport and dispose of wastewater coming from kitchen sinks, toilets and laundry rooms.
Stormwater Drainage System
A building’s plumbing system has pipes that connect to a local sewer system called the stormwater drainage. The latter is connected to the storm drains or holes that we usually see in sidewalks.The series of pipes making up this system are designed to carry away not only stormwater runoffs, but also the wastewater transferred by the building’s sanitation drainage system. This is why it’s also important not to throw garbage in streets, since they could clog the pipes connecting the storm drainage system to the main local sewer. Conventionally, the wastewater goes into larger underground pipes that deliver water for natural treatment-processes. Nowadays, modern stormwater drainage systems have piping connections to wastewater treatment plants.