If he leased the place with a disposal, it needs to remain there until the lease is up and a lease for the unit without one is drawn up.
In apartments and houses that I have rented, the landlord always pays for repairs to the property. If it is damage caused by the tenant, the tenant may be billed if provisions have been made in the lease for it. Same way when I managed rentals.
IANAL (but have been both a landlord and tenant)
Landlord here. Generally speaking, the landlord pays, at least until the next lease. If the tenant seems to be a problem in that one department, add a clause in the lease stating acceptable and unacceptable uses of the disposable, and that the tenant will be liable for unacceptable uses, and highlight the changes when signing the new lease.
You’ve all got nice landlords. My lease gives a two week grace period at move-in to find any clogged drains that are presumably the previous tenant’s fault, after which, any clogged sinks, tubs and toilets are my problem.
As for disposers, most of the clogs I’ve ever encountered are when people do something silly like think it can handle ten pounds of potato peels, or they fail to let the water run after grinding something to flush it along. One anecdote I’ve heard is that Thanksgiving is the busiest day for the “Rooter” guys as that the day everyone’s peeling a pile of potatoes and clogging up the house.
Also, disposers do wear out and eventually stop grinding stuff properly, letting big stuff through to settle in the first horizontal run of pipe it can find.
Or, alternatively, everybody in this thread quit discussing drainpipes and commence discussing the tyrannies of our evil network masters. It’s that damn spaghetti code that causes all the network pasta plugups.
The rule I heard was:
Never put a disposal or dishwasher in a rental - they will be destroyed.
How soon does the lease expire?
Either:
No disposal
Disposal - one or two clogs/year on the landlord; rest on tenant.
Install commercial-grade disposal with 2" drains (yeah, right)
At least you haven’t had the chicken bone trick - or have you?
We’re probably due for a new lease.
I haven’t had the chicken bone yet.
Anyway, the drain is ok after all.
Thanks, all.
I worked in rental property management for 26 years. The list of things people put down the pipes is amazing. Whenever we had a professional come out, we’d have the item bagged and show it to the tenant. Bones were common in a disposal. They don’t go down.
The worst thing ever taken out of a toilet was three newborn kittens. The tenant had flushed them, and told us “I’ve taken shits bigger than that.” Later someone remarked “You are a shit bigger than that.”
I’ve rented maybe half my adult life. If I think there’s a chance I screwed something up, I arrange for the repairs. Plumbing is one of those things. I’ve even replaced appliances. Better than waiting forever, being an irritation, and then getting something shitty.
Also, your disposal may just be crap. It would likely be cheaper to replace it anyway than to pay for more service calls. So if it’s over, I dunno, 10 years old, replace it but tell the tenant if they clog it again, to deal with it themselves.
(wanders off muttering, “C-I-L my lanlord”)
I don’t understand the massive amounts of matter people run thru disposals. When I peel potatoes, I do it over the garbage can. Same with anything I peel or trim. As far as I’m concerned, the disposal is for the residue that gets rinsed off dishes.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in a house that didn’t have a disposal. Or maybe other people are stupid. As for the OP, may I just say that I’m soooooooo glad I’m no longer a landlord. Life’s too short!
When I was a tenant, a stopped up drain was something that I fixed. As was a dripping faucet, squeaky door hinge, etc. I pretty much never bothered the landlord. People call over trivial shit?
People call our maintenance guys over very trivial things, and then some people won’t call even if the unit has several extreme problems. Some people will fix things themselves, renters come in all types.
We have an information sheet we give out for our units that explains things about common features that people get into trouble with. We have an information sheet for the disposal, the wood-burning fireplaces, the gas fireplaces in the units with those instead, and a few other common things tenants inexplicably have no earthly idea how to properly use.
Disposals still get clogged up, of course. Generally speaking as a landlord you need to follow what’s in your lease. If you’ve not addressed in the lease tenant-caused clogs or a general thing about tenant-caused damages then the presumption in most States and in the typical lease is that you, the landlord, are responsible for the plumber. If you’re a smaller scale land lord (we have lots of properties and I do not speak with tenants directly), you personally may want to go over and talk to your otherwise good tenant and politely show him how to properly use a disposal and also explain what situations it isn’t appropriately able to handle.
Our leases are written so that tenant negligence that leads to things like clogged drains, broken windows, etc are the tenant’s responsibility. However, we leave it up to the judgment of our property managers to enforce this or not. A problem tenant who probably isn’t going to be signed with us again, and who has caused several things to be broken we’ll probably refer them to local repairmen and require them to handle it themselves (if they don’t, we deduct it from their deposit at move out as per the law.) For a good tenant who just had an accident we’re more generous. We had a long time tenant break a sliding glass door when he was moving something in and it accidentally shattered the glass, accidents happen, the guy was a good tenant and it was a reasonable mistake and he’d not done anything like it before–we had our maintenance guys replace the glass for him at not cost to the tenant. I believe it was about $370 to repair, but when you’re talking a tenant that has lived there and would continue to live there for years I think it’s the right business call. The clauses in the lease that put some negligence repairs on the tenant are there to protect you from the bad tenant that is continually wrecking your property.
I have a fussy disposal and I occasionally make cooking mistakes, here is what I do and it’s one solution.
Go to SAMS Club or your local big box store. Get a box of the heaviest duty (look a “mil” thickness) large trashbags. Buy a roll or two of these. The roll should have 25-30 bags or so. These are thick plastic and are often called “contractor” bags and SAMS has them for a good price I’m sure other places do as well.
Tell the tenant that when they have a big load of pasta or rice or whatever to drain the stuff and use these bags and throw the glop away into the super duty bag then put it in the trashcan. Granted they will only use a small capacity of the bag but $15 or so for a roll of the super duty bags once a year is a lot cheaper than a plumber and you don’t have to fight with the tenant about how to use the disposal for big loads.
sigh I was the evil lan-lord today … my roomie and her mom were arguing over skype and I simply did not want to hear it any more, so I unpluged her from the router…oops…I guess the internet is down.
E-vile!
You, M’am are the Personal Savior of Mother-Daughter relations the world over.
Two more people in severe need of a time out (but who could Never be told they need one) get one.
Life is Good. 
That’s overkill. Big industrial-duty plastic bags for rice leftovers?
I save and use empty bread bags for this. Cuttings, trimmings, banana peels, orange skins and apple cores and all the generic glop that accumulates in the drain strainer (did I mention I have a drain strainer?) all goes into bread bags, which I keep in the freezer door until trash day. Neat, clean, no bugs or fruit flies, no peach pits or T-bones down the disposal.
I don’t use the disposal for anything. (I’m talking about most of my past appartments. Current apt doesn’t have one.) I always ran it once a week for 10 seconds to keep it from getting all corroded solid.
Don’t take out the disposal, or rather, do and replace it. If it can’t handle rice or pasta, it’s truly worthless.
Remove it and people will still throw crap down the drain anyway, plus, they will hate and blame you for its absence and you’ll probably be violating their lease.
My disposal actually says to put bones down it. It’s a hungry Badger and its gotta eat! Get one of those and a new plumber.
And don’t expect your tenants to pay for plumbers because they will just fill your pipes with Drano and ruin them instead, plus maybe let leaked water destroy your cabinets and floors.
I should think it is fifty year old plumbing as much as the disposal. The stuff gets past the disposal and lodges in the pipes some distance away.