Nashville Garbage Disposals

Humming, Silent, or Leaking

What the disposal does when you switch it on tells you most of what you need to know. A hum with no movement means the motor has power but the plate is jammed, usually on something that should not have gone down there. That is a repair, and often a quick one.

Nothing at all is electrical: the reset button on the underside has tripped, or the switch or outlet has failed. Also a repair. Water underneath depends on where it is coming from. A leak at the sink flange or at the dishwasher connection is fixable. Water weeping from the body of the unit means the shell has corroded through, and no amount of tightening brings that back.

Repair or Replace

Disposals are one of the cheaper fixtures in the house, so the maths tips toward replacement sooner than it does on, say, a water heater. Jams, resets, flange leaks and a failed switch are all worth repairing. A leaking body, a seized motor, or a unit already ten years old and giving trouble is usually better replaced, and we can normally do it on the same visit.

While the old one is off, it is worth looking at the drain work above it. Tubular drains under a sink get brittle and are frequently the actual source of a leak people blamed on the disposal. We rebuild that at the same time rather than putting a new unit onto tired pipe.

Fitting One With a New Sink

A kitchen remodel is the easiest time to sort the disposal out, because the sink is coming out anyway. New sink, new faucet, new disposal and new drains in one visit is less disruptive and cheaper than doing them separately, which is how we handled a recent Thompson’s Station kitchen.

Two things worth checking before you buy: whether your sink has a standard flange opening, and whether the dishwasher drains into the disposal, because a new unit ships with that inlet plugged and it has to be knocked out during the install.

Air Switches

If your disposal switch is awkwardly placed, or on the wall behind the faucet where you have to reach across the sink, an air switch is a small upgrade worth knowing about. It sits on the countertop or in a spare sink hole and triggers the disposal with a puff of air rather than a wired switch, so there is nothing electrical at the counter. We fit them regularly on replacements.

Smells and Buildup

A disposal that smells is usually not broken. Residue builds on the underside of the splash guard and in the grinding chamber, and neither gets rinsed by normal use. Cleaning it is a job you can do yourself, and we wrote up the ice cube method for exactly that.

If the smell is coming from the drain rather than the unit, that is a different problem and points at the line rather than the disposal. See drain cleaning. What not to do either way is pour chemical drain cleaner in, which sits on the blockage and damages the seals.