Sunday (yesterday as I write this EST), the guy who helps me clean came over. He was trying to organize the glasses on a small shelf on the sink, when the whole thing tumbled over. At first I thought he broke my expensive and treasured glasses in the dry rack.
Anyway I still was given serious cause for concern. Apparently some of the chards fell in the garbage disposal.
He turned it on, and it made a terrible sound. Then it stopped.
IAE he claimed it all went down. But garbage disposals aren’t made for glass. So surely it didn’t.
I was talking to his wife on the phone. And I said maybe I could pop a potato in the disposal. First she said that would be a good idea, but then she recanted.
Also I could call a plumber. But he only takes cash. And what could he do?
Any advice you have to give would be kindly received.
When you say ”Then it stopped.” do you mean the garbage disposal stopped, or the awful sound stopped (and the garbage disposal kept running and sounding like an empty garbage disposal)?
garbage disposers have a resettable breaker on them that will trip if the motor locks up. it’s a button on the bottom.
also on the bottom is a female hex fitting that is at the bottom of the motor shaft.
you use a 1/4" Allen key to put in the fitting to rotate the motor around each direction a couple times, reset the tripped breaker button, run some water and turn it on to see how it does.
in your situation, try to get any remaining glass out that’s on top of the rotor plate 1st, then do what I mentioned directly above, and let it rip.
98% chance you’re fine. if it’s damaged by this occurrence, it was likely on its last leg to begin with. garbage disposers are pretty tough.
If it simply stopped making horrible noises, the glass has been pulverized and went down the drain. If you are concerned, put a handful of ice cubes down there and run it again. Glass is very breakable and won’t stick to itself and make a clog. You may also want to fill up the basin and then drain it to get a big slug of water going down the drain to flush any leftover bits into the sewer.
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I agree, if you just meant the noise stopped, it’s fine. The inside of the disposal is made of steel, it’ll crush the glass just fine, and, contrary to popular belief, there’s no knives or blades in there*, so nothing is going to get dull. Ice, fruit pits, bones etc, can all go down to help clean it. They’ll make a god-awful noise, but they’re not going to hurt anything.
As for the glass, my biggest concern would be that a shard would fly back out and hit you or land on the floor where you’ll step on it. It doesn’t matter now, but I probably would have held something over the disposal just to contain anything that tried to come out.
IMO, as long as it’s not something really thick (like the a measuring cup), it’ll be safer to wash it down than to try to get it out.
*A garbage disposal works more like a food mill than a food processor. There’s holes along the outside edge and the impellers force the food through them.
If the garbage disposal is making no noise at all, (and obviously isn’t moving) it’s breaker is tripped.
If it’s making a humming sound but not turning, the impellers are blocked ( and pretty soon the breaker will trip and there will be no sound whatsoever)
Garbage disposals are incredibly sturdy, but do have a finite life span. (10-15 years) It is possible you are now confronted with this.
More likely is that you need to remove an obstruction.
Before you do that, know that the garbage disposal probably is the most contaminated spot in your house.
If you have a cut on your hand, you are asking for bad things if you stick it down there.
If it weren’t glass you are dealing with, a glove would do the trick, but you are, so you run the risk of a cut - opening yourself up (ha!) to risk of infection.
Anytime you stick your hand down the garbage disposal, you need to be sure the button is and will stay in off position. Smarter to also disengage the breaker for that group at the panel, but many will see this as an excess of caution.
In your case I would stick a shopvac down the disposal, if not available, even a regular vacuum cleaner hose.
Then I would manually rotate the disposal (insert an Allen key in the hex-slot at the bottom, move it back and forth.). If there is still glass in the disposal, this will sound like the world is about to end. That’s what makes it fun- don’t let it stop you! Again, disposals are very robust- if this does break yours, it was time for a new one.
Keep going back and forth until you can rotate it easily.
At that point, cover the disposal hole in the sink, push (reset) the little button at the bottom of the disposal. Then then turn it on. Odds are, it will run. Remove the cover, run water.
Feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment, save $125 on plumber show-up fees.
If it doesn’t run, pay the plumber - initially to do what I outlined here, then to replace the unit. Or you Can YouTube how to replace a garbage disposal. Depending on the space below the sink, that job can range from no biggie to major pain.
I think the disposer would probably eat all the glass without a problem. It’s questionable enough that I wouldn’t recommend this as a way to get rid of your unwanted glassware, and if there are solid chunks as big as an olive they may not break up. But I bet most broken glasses would probably pass through the thing without hurting it.
Yeah, they’re designed to make a valiant attempt on things that are nearly as hard as glass and a lot less inclined to shatter and therefore get out of the way of the blades. Big heavy pork bones and turkey bones and the like. Or peach pits. Generally speaking, the homeowner is going to turn the thing off, cuss, and pull out the bone / pit, but they’re kind of built with the expectation that what goes down there may include that kind of thing and the presence of such should not break the apparatus.
What’s far more problematic to the device (speaking from experience) is the presence of a tough cloth abrasive dishrag.
As others have mentioned, if you turn it on and there’s absolutely no noise, the likely cause is the breaker on the disposal has popped and will need to be reset. A stuck disposal will still make noise from the motor trying to turn. But very hard stuff like glass might get caught in places which make it hard for the blades to turn and they may be stuck. One option might be to get some Pam oil spray and spray it all around the inside of the disposal and maybe that would help lubricate the blockage so the blades could move again. You can also put something like a wooden dowel in the disposal to try to rotate the blades yourself. Obviously doing things like this have inherent dangers, so be sure the power is off before trying things like this. I have personally done both of these things to unstuck disposals, but in my case they were stuck because the disposal was old and was rusting out.
If nothing works, then you may need to replace the disposal. It’s a reasonably straightforward task that you can likely do yourself and the parts will be about $150. It’s in the class of home repair tasks that homeowners should tackle themselves rather than call a pro.
The link I posted early in the thread details how to fix the problem by using a wet/dry vac to get out the glass shards that could potentially fly out and hurt someone. It then takes the OP step by step through the process of removing the hex screw at the bottom and cleaning it out from there.
In my second or third experience with a running garbage disposal, I accidentally dropped an expensive paring knife down it, handle first. The disposal was running, and the knife shot straight back up. I caught it and have rarely used the disposal since, figuring my luck has been used up
The worst thing I ever had in mine was a couple of date pits. They occupy that tiny space of material design where they break up small enough to get wedged in the gaps of the disposal, but are tough enough to not break down any smaller. All they do is get stuck between the moving parts and wait for you to turn the motor off, rendering the disposal unable to start back up. Had to unmount mine, and bring it to my workbench and pick out each piece one by one.
Sorry. I meant the disposal stopped making that horrible sound. It’s still roaring and rrr-ing as far as I know (though I haven’t had the nerve to run it since that day).
BTW my friend talked to the plumber. He is in Florida for some reason. And like someone else suggested, he said try ice.
Why try a potato? I don’t know. Why does a potato make anymore or any less sense than ice:)? A potato is nice and fibrous after all. Just saying.
I thought the “potato” advice had to do with removing any remaining large chunks of glass. They’d embed in the potato and you can then lift it, and them, back out. Not relevant once the grinding clashing sound has stopped and it’s still whirring.
