We have a friend who dumps the leftovers from her family dinner directly into her garbage disposal. Luckily, she knows plumbers who help her keep her kitchen drain line clear. She and everyone should know that the garbage disposal is intended for small food particles, and not the entire remains of a family dinner or dinner party.
Recommendation
Raymark recommends scraping kitchen scraps and unwanted leftovers into the compost container instead of down the sink. This will help you (and our friend) save on plumbing problems and the costs of repair. Take advantage of Seattle’s Food & Yard Waste composting program, picked up weekly at the same time as garbage and recycling. This one step will prevent most of the commonly reported garbage disposal problems.
When you send too much down your drain pipes, clogged drain lines are often the result. Your garbage disposal is connected to your kitchen sink drain, which is connected to your home’s main drain line, which flows into your side sewer line, and then into the sewer main. Keep these drains running free by disposing only of the minimum of non-water waste in them.
Avoid Problems
Extend the life of your disposal and avoid disposal and drain problems by following these recommendations:
- Don’t treat your garbage disposal like a garbage can. Only put small food scraps down it.
- Don’t put grease down the disposal. Chopped-up grease is still grease and causes clogs.
- Don’t overload the disposal. Only put small food debris down the disposal, not an entire head of old lettuce or a bag of old apples. Put these in your food waste container instead.
- Don’t put hard food in to your disposal. No nutshells, avocado or peach pits, corn cobs, bones, coffee grounds, or eggshells.
- Don’t put anything stringy or with strings down the disposal, e.g. celery and teabags. Strings wrap around the grinders and stop the disposal from working.
- Don’t use a caustic drain cleaner. These corrode your disposal and your pipes, and plumbers do not like putting their hands or tools into the caustic mixture.
Call Raymark if you need help with your garbage disposal. Our techs carry several replacement options on their trucks if needed.
