Be aware that you may need to be sure to run the thing before you turn the dishwasher on, so if you have something in there like rice or couscous or something it doesn’t end up all over your dishes. If it’s been run and gone down the pipe, it’s fine, but otherwise you can have dried rice all over your glasses.
I use it less now that I compost, but I do use it for things that just wind up in the sink. I hate cleaning out sink drains and all and love that the disposal generally does it for me. I also use it sometimes for leftovers I haul out of the fridge, if it’s a stew or something. That way it doesn’t leak or smell in the trash.
Whoa! How does that work? I had a vague notion that water from the dishwasher drains to the disposer, but can stuff back up from the disposer to the washer?
Whenever your disposal gets that not so fresh feeling, throw some citrus, like orange or lime quarters, in there and let them partially grind up and sit overnight.
I’ll be damned! THAT’S where it was coming from! Thanks for solving an irritating mystery.
Is that why everyone’s been saying “use cold water”? (I wondered why it was so important that everyone was bolding.) I’ve always used hot water, the general cycle being:
Turn on hot water tap and scrape dirty dishes into disposal. (And anything in the fridge that needs thrown out.)
Turn on disposal. Run for thirty seconds or so.
Turn off disposal but leave water running until it’s really hot.
Turn on dishwasher.
I’ve always let the hot water run so that the water going to the dishwasher would be hot.
So, am I setting myself up for plumbing woes? Should I use some Drano in a pre-emptive strike?
It siphons in after the initial rinse… An air gap device in the outlet of the dishwasher will prevent this. It will also stop the dishwasher from flooding if the sink backs up (like from too much whatever in the disposer).
A couple of points to support or add here. The first is whether or not you are on city sewage or septic tank. We have a septic tank and use the disposal with moderation. Everything that goes in there has to be dealt with by the septic that isn’t really designed for foodstuffs. We scrape the plates and pots in the trash and just rinse the little stuff into the disposal.
A to cleaning, a plumber friend told me about using ice cubes. Turn the cool water on a little and get a couple of handfuls of ice. Tine the disposal on and feed it cubes two or three at a time. It really works well and leaves nothing behind.
Also, if you don’t know this, almost all disposals have a reset switch on the side that can restart one if a jam causes the internal breaker to flip. It is usually a small, possibly inset button that you can push with a allen wrench or straighten coat hanger. Be sure it is marked as a reset before you stick something metal in it.
Air gaps aren’t required in this part of the world, instead the dishwasher drain line is looped up higher than the sink drain (an inverted trap) to prevent backflow into the dishwasher. Some dishwasher models also have a checkvalve of sorts to prevent this.
If you have a non-functioning dishwasher, be absolutely certain that the anti-backflow measures are working correctly. Otherwise, when you open the dead dishwasher after a number of months, the smell of rotting sewage from the black cesspool inside it will knock you on your ass. Don’t ask me how I know about this. :smack:
The other problem with not running the disposer before the dishwasher is that the rice, cous-cous, old catfood or whatever in the disposer will slow down the drain enough that the dishwasher draining will flood the sink. And when you wake up in the morning your sink is coated in dried icky food residues. Quite an unpleasant preamble to breakfast.
My grandfather found out that you shouldn’t try to dispose of an expired box of instant mashed potato flakes down the dishwasher. Or spoons.
My new house has a garbage disposal; I don’t know if it works, I haven’t tried it yet. I hope it works out better than my non-draining washing machine.
I was always told that the reason to use cold water is that the spining electric motor of the disposal gen get too hot and overheat, so it was best to continuously run cold water down the drain while the disposal was running.
I was always told that the reason to use cold water is that the spining electric motor of the disposal gen get too hot and overheat, so it was best to continuously run cold water down the drain while the disposal was running.
They aren’t required by code here either, but I added one after making quite a mess when the sink backed up into my dishwasher.
A siphon has no problem with the high spot. Also, the spinning plate and teeth of the disposer make a fair approximation of a pump. The dishwasher connection is into the side the grinding chamber, pretty much where the outlet of a pump would be if it were designed as such. If you start with enough water in the sink to prime it, it will easilly generate enough head to overcome a loop a foot or so tall.
Lissa, the hot/cold water thing only matters if you pour melted fat down the drain. See, the fat will turn back to solid when it gets cool enough. You want that to happen right at the sink, because it will form little grease-gobbets that will flow nicely away. If you run hot water down with it, the fat stays liquid until the water stops; then it goops into a low spot to solidify, all in one lump. That’s not good.
I may be getting a new dishwasher in a few months. That’s what I should tell the installers, “I want an air gap device between the dishwasher and the sink”? Because I am so tired of this crap. Also I often get water burbling up the sink from the dishwasher, for added kicks.
