Grease Traps for the Dummy Plumber

The group of freelancers we call the "cleanup team" at Leaf Group is slowly making inroads into the enormous mass of misinformation published by early (and late) adopters at eHow.com, misinformation now being parceled out into niche sites. That's a good thing when the cleanup team member knows more about the topic than the original writer, but that's not always (not usually?) the case. Witness "How to Install a Grease Trap" which we found at BizFluent.com (really??? OK, it's now been moved to HomeSteady.com). Rewrite freelancer Nicole LaMarco (now calling herself Olivia Durden [and now back to Nicky LaMarco]) is responsible...

LaMarco reworded some rubbish originally published by five-time DotD Laura Hageman.¹  A quick comparison of the two had us wondering how anyone could think Nicole's version is much better. Like Laura, she sort of defined a grease trap in her introduction:

"Grease traps are mainly installed in restaurants where they are used to get rid of oil, wax, fat, grease and various other debris that falls into the sewage system and can cause blockages. It is a simple device, but it delivers a ton of service..."

Yeah "a ton... not to mention that "falls into the sewage system" bit. We're pretty certain the greasy stuff floats into the sewer system, but what the heck. We also noticed that neither author used the word "congeal," and neither had anything useful to say about how grease traps work. Since LaMarco was doing little more than rewording Hageman's version, that's no surprise.

What is a surprise is that, although Nicole mumbled something about residential grease traps – probably what an OQ with a septic system was asking about – her post was mainly about commercial traps. Unfortunately, LaMarco showed a remarkable lack of knowledge in her "instructions" for installing your trap, which were harvested from a blog that seems to have used Hageman's post  as its source. Talk about recursion! LaMarco's instructions?

"Each of its three connections – upper right, left and bottom right – is attached to a different correlating part of the sink." 

We aren't really sure that her "correlating" means... but here's Nicole's conceptualization:

1. "The upper right connection is attached to the vent of the holding tank of the grease trap. It is the connection that controls how water flows in and out of the trap. You should clean out the vent with a tee before making the connection." – Huh? 
2. "The left connection is connected to the pipe of the sink. This pipe is the one that comes down from the sink. It loops up and joins another straight pipe. It is the looping pipe that you will attach to the left connection of the grease trap." – Again, "Huh?"
3. "The bottom right connection is attached to the sewer pipe. It is the pipe that directs the liquid in the grease trap to the sewage system."  – "Directs"?

The crap about "upper left," etc., is straight out of the blog – and pretty much out of Hageman's post. Now, if Hageman or LaMarco had shown a diagram, maybe those "upper" and "lower" and "left" and "right" directions might have made sense (although that "... looping pipe that you will attach to the left connection of the grease trap..." still wouldn't make any sense). If, on the other hand, LaMarco had discussed her three connections in terms of "inlet," "outlet," and "vent"; we might not be giving her a Dumbass of the Day award. She didn't, though, so we are. Maybe we should also give one to Michelle Seidel, B.Sc., LL.B., MBA, who "reviewed" Nicole's rewrite. ¹ Hageman's version can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_4673235_install-grease-trap.html

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