Maintaining the garbage disposal is essential. Otherwise, your kitchen sink could be clogging more often than you expect.
Maintaining the garbage disposal is essential. Otherwise, your kitchen sink could be clogging more often than you expect. When the dirty water, coffee grinds, and food debris cannot drain, they’ll back up instead. Before you have a disgusting flood on your hands, it’s time to take a closer look. What’s wrong with it? And if you can’t figure it out, then we can do it for you!
What Causes the Clogs?
Even though pandemic-related restrictions are lifting, you might not be comfortable with venturing out into public spaces. That probably means you’ve been spending more time brushing up on your kitchen skills. While this experimentation leads to new cakes, pies, and other baked goods, it can also end in disaster. For one thing, staple ingredients such as eggs, flour, sugar, and butter gum up the works.
Remember that old memory device FOG (fats, oils, greases) none of these should go down your sink drain. Other accidental drops lead to blockages. It’s no longer just the age-old standby of stray wedding rings. Corn cobs, avocado pits, and apple cores cause trouble as well. Suppose that water cannot pass through the blades of the disposal easily enough. Is this the case? Then it’s a strong indication that something is wrong with the inner workings of your kitchen sink. That said, attempting a DIY fix could be risky. You’ve got to exercise some common sense: refer back to your owner’s manual. Once you’ve reread that, pull the plug from your disposal unit. That way, you won’t sustain accidental injuries.
What Else Should You Do?
Turn the disposal off and wait until it stops moving. As we mentioned above, this will prevent you from getting hurt. Grab a flashlight and peer down the drain’s opening. Spot the clog; shoving your hand inside to fish around for it is a bad idea. Use a broom handle or long wooden spoon to budge the impeller blades. Perform a rocking motion as if you were using a toilet plunger.
Widemouthed plungers can also help. These tools can release the clog in the garbage disposal. Position the plunger over the drain, then push and pull. A gross but oddly satisfying popping sound tells you the blockage has been resolved. Then give the blades some time to rest. This intermission should be about twenty minutes or so. This action allows the blades to cool down.
After twenty minutes, restore the garbage disposal’s power supply. As soon as that is done, hit the reset button. Use hot water and baking soda to remove any stubborn residue.
All of Your Plumbing Needs from Master Plumbing
Give Master Plumbing a call at (301) 650-9100, or contact us online to get more information on how our expert plumbers can help you with just about anything plumbing-related! We have received Angie’s List Super Service Award recognition for plumbing and drain cleaning every year since 2007, in addition to the Best Plumber award from Best of Bethesda. We are fully licensed, bonded, and insured, and our service is unparalleled. Give us a call today—you won’t regret it! To see examples of our projects, follow us on Facebook and Twitter!