How Do I know if My Garbage Disposal Needs to be Replaced?

The following signs are notifiers that your garbage disposal needs to be replaced 

• Excessive Clogging
  • Dropping all forms of thin and thin food scraps can damage and dull your blades in a garbage disposal. If the blades are too dull, large portions of food are not getting ground; thus entrapping and clogging the upper chamber of the disposal.
  • Another reason that creates clogging is due to undersizing your garbage disposal. In a 1-2 person household a ½ Horse Power (HP) motor should be used. A home with 3-6 people requires a  ¾ HP motor. A 5-8 person household will likely function best with a 1HP motor. Any home with more than 8 people should obtain a 2HP motor. Constantly washing down food scraps of an eight person household into a garbage disposal with only a ½ HP motor will most likely damage it at a faster rate than usual. 
• Having to press the reset button multiple times throughout the day
  • Located under the actual disposal unit, there is a small reset button. This button restores electrical power to the unit after the circuit breaker is tripped on by a motor overload. Finding yourself under the sink pushing the reset button after every meal, can be a hint to getting your garbage disposal looked at or even replaced.
• The food grinding process is slower
  • Two issues can be the culprit behind a longer food grind. Like previously mentioned dull blades cannot properly disassemble food. Dull blades keep food waste rotating, in the upper chamber. 
  • On the other hand, if your blades are in working condition, but the same amount of food you used to put in the disposal is consistently taking up more time, this may be a motor defect. Overtime motors begin to grow weak and can no longer manage previous workloads; replacing the motor will open future complications as the wear and tear of the entire unit may also be reaching its end. Replacing the entire unit would be more cost-effective in the long run.
• Noticing a leak under the garbage disposal unit
  • A garbage disposal unit is still considered a plumbing appliance because it manages water and waste. Over time your garbage disposal may acquire cracks around the unit’s chamber. Those same cracks become gateways for leaks. The water being poured from your faucet will reach the different cracked areas of the unit resulting in water damage on the exterior of it and the surrounding areas. Cracks can not be repaired within the unit, meaning the whole garbage disposal must be removed and a new one must be brought in.
• The garbage disposal makes a loud humming noise but will not churn
  • When the garbage disposal creates a loud humming sound but does not turn on; the complication is likely correlated to a dead motor. The humming noise indicates that the appliance is receiving electrical power, but the motor can not rotate the whole unit and instead it remains in a stalled position.

Repairing  an older garbage disposal unit piece by piece will be more expensive than purchasing a new one. Once you have made the choice to upgrade to a new unit,  contact our plumbing service so your experience will go much more smoothly.

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