5 Ways to Keep Garbage Disposal Problem Free

How many times during the past 12 months did your garbage disposal unit breakdown? If you answered none, then you belong to the lucky ones. Did you know that most of the time, the cause of garbage disposal breakdown is due to poor decision making? What should you do to keep yourself from being frustrated and paying unnecessary plumbing fees for your garbage disposal unit? Here are 5 tips you can follow to keep your garbage disposal problem free.

1. Grease and Fat

Is it your habit to put greasy or fatty food in the garbage disposal? Or maybe you simply throw the used oil or fat down there right after cooking? It is important to know that the garbage disposal unit is not designed to handle grease and fat. More importantly, grease and fat that goes down the drain will eventually solidify causing the pipes to clog up. So what do you do with your grease and fat? Put them in a jar or tin can and dispose of them properly.

2. Starchy Food

If grease and fat is bad for your garbage disposal unit, so it starchy food like rice, pasta, and others. You cannot just ram those types of food into your garbage disposal and expect them to be shredded into bits. Most probably, what would happen is that they will cling to the blades, the sides of the disposal, or the inside lining of the drain pipe. And because starchy food is a bit difficult to deal with, it can gather in the trap of the drain, which in turn results in the swelling and clogging up of the pipes. Can you predict what happens next?

3. Cold Water

If grease, fat, and starchy food is bad for your garbage disposal, cold water on the other hand is good for it. Remember to always allow the cold water to run when you are using the garbage disposal unit. This not only helps to minimize the possibility of damaging it, but also helps in solidifying the grease and fat that may gave gotten into the unit. When grease and fat solidifies, it allows the garbage disposal unit to break it up to smaller pieces to make it easier to get flushed away. This is in contrast to using hot water, which has the effect of liquefying the grease allowing it to run down the pipes where it can solidify near the trap and cause a blockage.

4. Stringy and Fibrous Food

What are the examples of stringy food? These are celery, chard, asparagus, and others. Aside from stringy food, you should also make it a point to keep tough-peeled vegetables out of the garbage disposal unit like onion skins, carrot peels, and potato peels among others. Even eggshells should not be thrown into the garbage disposal because eggshells have fibrous membranes. When these get into the garbage disposal unit, there is a tendency that the eggshells will slide past the unit blades and cause clogging in the trap. Another scenario is that they can wrap around the blades of the unit, which will cause the motor to jam and probably even overheat resulting in breakdown.

5. Bones and Pits

It does not matter if it is large animal bones like those of beef and pork or smaller ones like those from chicken or even fish, make sure that these along with peach pits among others do not end up in your garbage disposal unit. Keep in mind that these hard materials can damage the unit because it is not designed to handle them. This means that the presence of these objects in the disposal can result in you having to buy a replacement unit.

Keep all these tips in mind as well as make sure that non-biodegradable materials like cigarette butts are kept out of the disposal. Just because it is called a garbage disposal does not mean you should throw your garbage in it. The moment your unit breaks down, call Scott English Plumbing at once!