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Erma1ina Erma1ina is offline
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Default garbage disposal

JoeSpareBedroom wrote:

"Dottie" wrote in message
...
I have a 5 yr. old Insinkerator (Badger5) garbage disposal. It still
turns - but doesn't grind up anything. Is this about the average age
of a garbage disposal? I will go shopping for one in the next few
days and would like to know whether to get another one like this or
switch to something else.


What sorts of things is it NOT grinding? I'm asking because many years ago,
I discovered that a disposal will not handle kale stems, for instance.
Rather, it will spin them into rope strong enough to anchor an ocean liner.
If you've been putting any sort of tough vegetable stems into the disposal,
some of them may have wrapped themselves around the hammers (the parts that
do the grinding). That would prevent any subsequent food from being ground
up properly.

The hammers are easy to feel. They're not sharp, and they're on the bottom
plate of the disposal. Have you inspected them to see if they're covered
with something?


Along the same line as Joe: Check to be sure those "hammers" that do the
grinding are moving freely.

A few months ago I noticed my Insinkerator sounded a little odd and was
taking forever to grind up stuff. I discovered that one of the hammers
was "frozen" and not moving freely -- a little Liquid Wrench and a bit
of coaxing by tapping on it with a real wrench freed it up and it acts
normally now.

Probably I use my disposal less than average and that may have
contributed to the problem. Now I'm more conscientious about
periodically grinding up some ice cubes to clear it out and keep
everything moving the way it should.