I’m now wondering what is ok to go down a disposal? It seems most things you would not be ok putting down a drain you would not put in a disposal.
Yet I live in a hi-rise and every unit in the building is fitted with a sink disposal unit.
Why would they do it if it is a bad idea? Or are disposals only bad if you have a septic system? (My building dumps into city sewage which goes to a treatment plant.)
The general advice is don’t “put” anything down there. Incidental food scraps that rinse off from dishes are okay, but that rubber catcher is there for a reason. Anything that won’t slip thru on it’s own should be scooped up and thrown in the trash or composted, not shoved thru the rubber catcher. The less solids that go down there, the better.
Having run a condo complex and dealt extensively with big building professional plumbers I’ll say:
Semi-professionally speaking, @snowthx nailed it. Zero stuff from food prep should go down a disposal. 100% of that goes in the garbage can. After cooking or eating, the pots, dishes, etc., should have anything that can be readily scraped off scraped into the garbage can. Any little residue that rinses off can go down the disposer if, and only if, it wasn’t caught by the rubber catcher. At the end of washing up, the gunk sitting on top of the rubber strainer should be removed by hand and put into the garbage can.
The purpose of the disposer is to convert stuff that’s <1/4" in diameter into teeny tiny shreds. Not to convert a whole potato into large shards.
Any one item won’t clog a modern clean pipe. The sum of lots of different stuff will. Soap, fat, and chunks of whatever together produce a sticky sludge that adheres to the pipe interior and is not at all water-soluble.
Just like with atherosclerosis, the random place where a small blob first sticks becomes a trap that tends to attract everything else sliding by. So the clog gets bigger and the free space for water to flow gets smaller. That’s a one-way process.
There is no great force in drain pipes. It’s just a gentle slow intermittent water flow in the bottom. Once a clog starts, nothing but a snake will remove it. So don’t start one.
If this is so (NOTHING goes in a disposal) then why are they even allowed? What’s the point? If it is a slow motion disaster to use one then why are they ubiquitous?
As I mentioned, I live in a hi-rise and the developer put them in 200(ish) apartments. Why do that if they will all stuff-up the system?
The choice is people putting big chunks down or small chunks down. And, like dishwashers, to name an appliance rare in many other countries, Americans sort of expect them.
Despite the fact they’ll misuse them.
Isn’t the point of a disposal to make big chunks small chunks?
We do not have a disposal (on septic) and we give scraps to our hens. Although we have a dishwasher, I prefer not using it. Every few weeks my gf ordains that we need to use the dishwasher (for its own good).
Is there a difference (as regards your pipes) between using your dishwasher and hand washing the dishes?
In both cases you are using soap and washing whatever down the same drain. The difference is manual labor versus using the machine.
You can buy septic-safe dishwasher detergent: Amazon.com : septic safe dishwasher detergent
Not that I know of. It’s just that the effort for me to “rinse” the plates before putting them in the dishwasher is only slightly less than the effort to wash them.
The real choice that folks ought to be making is between using the sink as the trash can for anything “icky” versus using the sink only to wash away the last little bits that can’t be scraped into the real trash can first.
As misused by Americans, the disposer is now a defensive measure by the landlord to ensure that when somebody does try to wash half their dinner down the sink, the disposer will chop it fine enough that the amount of clogging is less. Far from zero, but less.
How does a tower help you see where the town gets its water. The tanks have to be filled.
Water towers are not a place to store water. In a typical town, there may be less than a two hour supply of water in that tower. It’s main purpose it pressure storage. If half the town flushes at the same time (say during a Superbowl commercial), everybody gets adequate pressure. The water needs to be above the population. If there are hills, the tank can be near the top of a hill at or below ground level. Kansas, for example, has few hills, so the tower needs to be elevated.
In addition to @Yelnick_McWawa’s excellent point about being a pressure accumulator, towers also let the pumps that fill the tower be sized for the average flow rate to all the customers, not the peak plausible flow rate to all the customers. Which is how big and powerful and expensive they’d have to be if there was no tower.
Pumps of course are sized with some overage to deal with the demand spike generally seen first thing in the morning and in the evening. But that’s partly offset by the relative lack of consumption by business at those times.
A properly designed and maintained aerobic system has a 24 hour dwell time. My system has two tanks, primary treatment and tertiary treatment. Since the land around here doesn’t perc, my system uses sprinklers. I have a 1 acre lot. Keeps the grass watered. No one plays in the sprinklers, but there is never any odor or pollution. Just the comforting hum of the air pump 24/7.
As has been mentioned, when properly maintained an individual aerobic system works as well as or better than a central sewage system. And it isn’t rocket science and so is easy to DYI maintain. I do have to have the primary tank pumped every couple of years, but that isn’t a problem.
If I remember correctly, disposals were illegal in New York city for many years. Disposals don’t solve anything, just move a problem from one place to another. On a septic system, the second place isn’t far away…
So, they are not illegal now? If so, why are they legal if they are a means to wreck plumbing and sewers?
I’m not trying to be a jerk about this but I do not get it. Everyone here is saying sink disposals are terrible yet they are nearly ubiquitous in the US. 2 + 2 is not adding to 4 for me here.
The USA consumer products people in 1950 came up with a lot of silly innovations. Electric toothbrushes. Battery powered ashtrays. And garbage disposers.
In 1950s suburbia, new miracles of modern consumer homemaker convenience sold houses. Nobody that built those houses cared if the plumbing would clog 5 years later. Heck, in the early days they may not have known. It’s just creeping feature-itis. And now we have a society that simply assumes these things should exist. Even though they really should not.
From the current 2023 ill-informed consumer POV, being told a disposer is bad for the pipes in a new construction house or apartment would be viewed simply as proof the plumbing is inadequately shoddy; not that the whole idea of disposers was bad ~70 years ago.
Nothing hard to understand here.
Why do traffic engineers keep making yellow lights longer? Because impatient people keep pressing into them longer and longer. Which extra length of course habituates people into pressing even longer. Individually we’re pretty smart. Collectively, we’re a stupid herd of ill-tempered cattle.
What about all that bedrock, in the mountains in some places how difficult is it to drill for water wells and hookup underground sewer lines?
My community sewer system is a series of lagoons, the final pond is used to irrigates crops etc. twp contracts out the management and maintenance, significant improvements since the 80’s when installed to protect our local rural residential lakes.
It’s really turned into an asset but capacity is limited.
No water meters, private wells so everyone on the sewer is charged the same flat rate. A bit unfair for for small households, also does not curb water consumption, imo ymmv.
As an aside…
I have very recently been through a shit load of dental procedures. My dentist, a periodontist and a dental surgeon.
ALL of them recommended I use an electric toothbrush. And not just once…every visit to each of them.
They never recommended any brand. Just that I use one.
So…what I too thought was a gimmick maybe isn’t when it comes to a toothbrush?
/hijack
I suspect there’s some differences between the modern ultrasonic ones and the slow-moving gimmicks from way back when. But my dentist too has recommended an electric toothbrush. Which I have and sometimes even use. 
What I don’t know is whether, like air bags vs seat belts, the benefit is more statistical than personal. IOW, if most people brush manually badly & rarely but will play longer with their new toy, the darn thing could even be less effective on a cleaning effectiveness per second basis, while still delivering a benefit to the whole crowd collectively through increased use. I’m not suggesting that is the case; I’m suggesting it might be part of it. If so, for those of us who are diligent teeth brushers anyhow, the incremental personal benefit might be much less or even zero.
An interesting question to be sure. If I get bored I’ll see what I can dig up on dental practice guidelines. IIRC we don’t currently have a practicing dentist on the Dope.
I was just now wondering about how laundry affects septic systems. With it being nearly impossible to find clothing that is not half synthetic fiber, that cannot be good for a septic system. I remember reading somewhere that a large fraction of the plastic material floating in the oceans is from laundry.