I happend to be AOC (a$$hole on call) when a mexican restuarant called with water flooding in the kitchen. I knew what to expect because they always called on a sunday night about every 4 months. So I went to the shop, hooked up to the jetter and drove 50 miles on a sunday night of course when it was about 15 degrees outside.
There is a 4" c/o outside by the back door, and from there it runs about 100' and pick's up the mini mart that it runs under. From there it exits on the other side of the mini mart in 6" with another c/o and from there it goes to the city 15' away.
I decided to open the 6" c/o downstream and give it a quick jetting because I didnt want the huge grease chunks from upstream to catch downstream and flood the mini mart. So after this I go and start jetting from the restaurant unplug it, clean it, check down stream, clean it some more, then go back downstream to the 6" c/o to hit it one more time.
Well, by the time I got there it had plugged downstream and I had chunks of grease floating out of the c/o and onto the side walk and curb, and it was heading for a storm drain! I acted fast and unpluged it quick but the damage was done. And guess who just happend to be driving by, a Department Of Ecology employee. She stopped in and I talked with her for a while and upon her instruction I washed the side walk and curb down with water into the storm drain. It was dark and I did the best I could but about a week later we recieved a bill from the city for clean up. WTF! The letter said that I had cleaned it 95% but the city had to do the rest the follwing day. The bill was $400.00! So we passed on the saving's to the customer.
The property owner is very cheap and has repeatedly declined my bid to instal a 1500 gal grease interceptor outside in the parking lot and also declined separating each building from each other. He seem's to think that because it's been fine for 40 yrs it's going to be fine another 40. As long as the restuarant was paying to have it cleaned he didnt care. Well he cared when his tennant's tried giving this bill.
The first thing I thought when the DOE lady pulled up was oh man, here we go. She understood the situation though so that helped.
