Waste disposal how does it work

As your food scraps go into your disposal, they land in what is called the upper hopper chamber. When you put food scraps down the drain, you want to make sure you are running the garbage disposal with water running into the upper hopper at the same time.

Inside of the upper hopper, there is the shredder ring and the flywheel. The flywheel has two impellers on the sides of the wheel. The wheel is turned by an insulated motor at the bottom of the garbage disposal.

The shredder wheel is a sharp, stationary piece of metal that has grooves and teeth. As the flywheel is spun by the motor, any food and water that is put into the upper hopper chamber is spun by centrifugal force into the shredder ring and pushed up onto the ring by the impellers.

Now that you know how a garbage disposal works, you should make sure you know how to fix a jammed garbage disposal. This means cleaning it, which can also eliminate odd smells from the unit. If your garbage disposal fails for a covered reason and you have a Landmark Home Warranty plan, you could have your garbage disposal repaired or replaced it the cost of a service call fee.

Check out our plumbing maintenance articles and infographics. The motion of the rotation flings food chunks into the grooves of the shredder ring repeatedly. This process continues until the food chunks have become so small that they slip past small openings in the shredder ring and slide down the drain pipe. The waste line connector is in the lower hopper chamber.

When ground-up food falls through the shredder ring, it enters the opening in the waste line connector and flushes out of the disposal and into a drain pipe. The drain pipe linked to the waste line connector works like any other, and the ground-up food ends up in the sewer. This is an electrical problem, not necessarily a disposal problem.

Look for the reset button on the bottom of the lower hopper chamber. Press it and try again. The impellers are probably stuck. First, unplug the disposal. Look for a hex-shaped hole at the bottom of the lower hopper chamber.

Many garbage disposals come with a special hex wrench designed for this hole. Fit the wrench into the hole and force it back and forth to un-jam the impellers. Make sure you unplugged the disposal before you attempt this. A garbage disposal is made up of many different, interlocking parts. Leaks can occur between any of these parts. Most garbage disposals fit the standard drain outlet.

Local safety codes may determine the distance the switch must be located from the sink—the farther away, the safer. Call for free estimates from local appliance pros now: Don Vandervort writes or edits every article at HomeTips. HomeTips articles may contain links to Amazon.