According to my plumber= NOTHING!!!
He says you have to run alot of water down the drain to keep the stuff moving and not sticking to the walls of the pipe. Especially pasta. And grease will rapidly cool off and stick too.
I occassionally grind little bits of stuff that come off of the dishes, but big stuff goes in the trash or gets composted.
I’ve been putting coffee grounds and egg shells down my disposal for years and nothing bad has ever happened.
I don’t put stringy things like whole celery stalks or onion skins down, but small meat scraps always go away just fine.
As long as you flush it with plenty of water and let it run until it’s all gone, coffee grounds and egg shells and even fat will be fine in the disposal.
It’s not the grounds that clog the disposer - it’s the filters…
And don’t put bullets down the disposal either, trust me.
I’m a former sewer/drain cleaner. I have about 15 or so years experience. The rule of thumb I always used was that cooked foods with plenty of water is fine. Uncooked foods always seemed to be the problem, especially potato peels and anything stringy like celery or banana peels. The cooked foods break up a lot easier.
I shove ungodly things down my disposal with no problem at all, including coffee grounds and eggshells. The important thing is to run enough water to wash everything out of the pipes…cold water.
Ha! Good one, thanks for the tip.
I think the real issue here is not that the garbage disposal can’t process the material, it’s that the p-trap under the sink gets clogged with whatever passes through the disposal.
So, technically, it’s not that you can’t put the stuff through the disposal, or that it won’t or shouldn’t go through, it’s that you have to be sure to run enough water afterwards to make sure you clean out the p-trap so that heavy (coffee grounds), sticky (pasta, potato peels), and sharp things (egg shells), don’t get stuck in the p-trap and solidify there to cause a blockage.
I always run a bunch of water when the disposal is going. That just seemed like common sense to me; you have to runse the stuff away!
All this talk of composting has inspired me to start a thread about that. As the proud new owner of a backyard, and I would like to learn how to do that.
I’m curious to know where this tip came from.
(Part of me is wondering why no one’s putting these things into the compost, minus bullets of course. Then it occurred to me that maybe not everywhere has compost pickup on garbage day.)
I have to admit that I don’t get the concept of a garbage disposal–isn’t this why trash cans were invented?
This tip is brought to you by common sense. You don’t want bullets getting ground up in a high speed metal thingy. One or two may actually discharge. :eek:
It’s fun to grind things up, sheesh!
Really, I don’t want to arsed to scrape every dish into the garbage that isn’t licked clean. That, and when you rinse off the plate in the sink you not only get off the big stuff but you prevent the little stuff from crusting on before you get a chance to wash 'em.
No rice, either. Disposal turns rice into a pasty glue.
I took my disposal out a few years ago and never miss it.
No, no, no, they do go down the disposal. The problem is your pipes.
I’ve been putting coffee grounds down the kitchen disposer/sink for 22 years and no problem. Actually, I was told at one time that it is an astringent and will help prevent build up on the inner side of the pipe.
But one thing NEVER put is one time I put uncooked flaked instant mashed potatoes down there, and followed with hot water. What a mistake! They inflated and clogged up everything. I, being a handy homeowner had to disassemble all the pipes and scrape it out with a spoon!
Never had a disposal before this house, which we bought in 2005. Right off, I was told no coffee grounds or eggshells. Coffee grounds usually end up in the garden, by a shrub or a tree…
We honestly hardly ever use it. One nice tip I heard, which really works, is when the chance comes up, and I want to de-stink the thing, I’ll cut a lemon peel into pieces and grind that down with lots of water.
I don’t run any saplings larger than 1" diameter down the disposal.
After 40 years in the construction and maintenance business, I put nothing in the disposal except for the bits of food that are rinsed off the plates. Those will decompose in the disposal chamber and eventually will be ground up by the machine. I have never had a plumber tell me that it’s a good idea to put food down a disposal, and in fact when I worked for a public housing agency and purchased properties, one of the first things that was done was to remove the garbage disposals. They’re a maintenance nightmare.
No tampons down the disposal, either.
Or body parts. With or without bullets.
We recently moved from a place with a disposal (aka ‘the sink monster’, aka ‘the garbage eater’) to a place with persnickety pipes and no sink monster. To actually try to help the OP, here’s how I deal with the grounds from my french press.
I use one of those 1-cup plastic coffee filter cones. Instead of a disposable filter, I fold up a paper towel and stick it in the cone. Then I dump the grounds in the paper towel, followed by water-n-grounds slurry as I rinse out the french press. By the time the rest of the coffee ritual is done, the grounds in the paper towel are damp-dry, and I throw the whole thing out.
Apparently I should be composting though, but I’ve got to talk with Ms. Attack to designate the composts site.
When we used a French press, I would just blast some water into the pot from the sink, stir a bit to loosen the grounds and dump it directly into the plastic garbage bag. Anything left over, scoop out with a paper towel or rinse and repeat.
Does anybody add water to the grounds and flush the slurry to the municipal sewers?