Emergency Unclogging of Your Garbage Disposal – Should You Panic?

Emergency Unclogging of Your Garbage Disposal – Should You Panic?

Garbage disposals are a perfect kitchen accessory that helps with cleaning up after meals and makes dish rinsing practically a piece of cake. However, clogging is one of the major pitfalls of this tool. No matter what you do, it can happen, even if you really take care and are using it properly.

Well first of all you need to get the best garbage disposal available that will at least delay clogging problems. You need to go for a model that has a very high horsepower rating yet you can still safely pay for it. Your model also needs to have a way to manually turn the shaft should it get stopped up.

When you’re working with your disposal make sure that you don’t put many big food pieces through it as this really clogs it up fast. For example if you’re trying to grind big pieces of fruits or vegetables, that might leave you behind with problems. Although it is quite tempting to simply dump everything in that big hole in the sink and turn on the machine, try to avoid it. Leave bigger scraps and trimmings for the trash can and simply use your disposal machine for the smaller pieces that go safely in it without hurting the equipment.

Of course, like I said in the beginning, no matter what you do, the garbage disposal might just clog up anyway. Here are a few tips for you should this happen:

Check whether you have a jammed motor. Try to flip the switch and if your machine hums without doing anything else, it must be locked up. In this case turn off switch, wait for a while and then press the reset button, see if it helps.

Most garbage disposals have an area at the bottom that enables you to manually free it up by turning the shaft. Use a wrench for it, a standard one will suffice.

At times you might feel that there is something jammed inside, but you just can’t get it out. Well this is where you’ll either learn to unclog your disposal manually or call for a professional who will do this for you in a jiffy. A professional can be a regular plumber who knows his craft. You can find plumbers either in the Yellow Pages Directory or online by searching based on your location. You can also ask around by friends and family whether they know of somebody who can help you with that. You might just get a cheaper rate than contacting somebody blindly through the phone.