Thanksgiving Kitchen Survival in Raleigh-Durham: Garbage Disposal Do’s & Don’ts

The last thing you want to deal with when preparing for the holidays or hosting guests is your kitchen sink getting clogged and becoming unusable. While a minor clog may be something you can handle yourself, a stubborn clog will often require you to enlist the help of an emergency plumber. In this guide, we’ll provide useful holiday plumbing tips for Raleigh homeowners to lessen the chances of clogs and also discuss what to do when dealing with a clog.

Garbage Disposal Do’s and Don’ts

When used properly, a garbage disposal can help prevent kitchen clogs by lessening the chances of food scraps getting stuck inside the drain. On the other hand, not using your disposal correctly increases the chances of a major clog that may need to be cleared by a plumber. By proper use, we mean only putting small scraps of food into the disposal, always having cold water running when the disposal is on and making sure to still dispose of certain items in the trash.

Garbage disposals work by pulverizing scraps into tiny pieces so that they easily get washed down the drain and into the municipal sewer system. Overloading the disposal or putting in large scraps can prevent everything from getting fully ground up, resulting in the disposal and/or the P-trap under the drain getting clogged. Running cold water when using the disposal ensures that any fat and grease that goes down the drain remains solid, lessening the chances of it sticking within the disposal and drain.

Nonetheless, you should still try to avoid grease, fat or oil going down the drain, as they can get stuck inside your sewer line and lead to it backing up. A sewer line backup is an extremely serious problem since you won’t be able to use your plumbing whatsoever until the problem is fixed.

The biggest key to avoiding garbage disposal issues is knowing what types of food a disposal can and can’t handle. Pasta, rice, potatoes and other starches get ground up into a thick, sticky paste when run through a garbage disposal, which can easily cause a clog. Celery, banana peels, squash, corn silk/husks and other fibrous fruits and vegetables can easily get wrapped around the spinning impellers and cause the disposal to become jammed. The same can happen if you try to run raw or cooked meat through a disposal. Hard items like shells or bones can get trapped between an impeller and the grinding ring, which also results in the disposal getting jammed.

If you hear the disposal stop spinning when it’s running, it’s a sure sign that it’s jammed. Whenever this happens, you should immediately turn the disposal off to prevent the motor from overheating and potentially burning out. After unplugging the disposal, you can try to unjam it by inserting an Allen wrench into the slot on the bottom of the unit and then turning it back and forth to manually spin the impellers. Once the impellers spin freely, you may still need to use a pair of long needle-nose pliers to remove whatever caused the unit to jam.

If you can’t get the impellers to spin, a plumber can fix the issue by taking the disposal apart. This isn’t something you should attempt yourself due to the risk of ruining the unit.

Other Tips for Preventing Clogs

If you have a garbage disposal, it’s usually okay to just scrape plates off into the disposal as long as you follow the basic rules we just discussed. If you don’t have a disposal, it’s essential to scrape plates into the trash before rinsing them off. The other major key is using a sink strainer when rinsing/washing dishes to keep stuck-on bits of food from going down the drain and getting stuck inside the P-trap.

One thing you may have heard is that you can use vinegar and baking soda to clean your drains and reduce the chances of them clogging. The truth is that this really isn’t an effective way to properly clean a drain. That said, it can help to get rid of slime and scum within the drain and P-trap to prevent nasty drain odors.

Options for Unclogging Your Kitchen Sink

The first option when dealing with a clogged sink is to try to clear the drain with a sink plunger. A plunger works by forcing water down the drain, which can help break the mass up so that water again starts to drain. If you have a dual sink, you’ll need to plug the other drain before plunging the clogged drain or else the plunger won’t produce the necessary force.

If plunging the drain doesn’t work, the safest option is to call a professional drain cleaning service. Using a manual pipe snake or pouring drain cleaner down the sink can damage your plumbing and just make things worse. A plumber will typically use a mechanical drain auger to break through the clog without causing any damage. This method is also effective for cleaning and unclogging a home’s main sewer line. Another advantage of hiring a plumber is that they can perform a video camera inspection to identify any potential areas of concern.

At JD Service Now, we’re proud to be one of the most trusted Triangle drain cleaning services. We’ve been serving Raleigh-Durham and the surrounding areas for 20 years. Our team is available seven days a week to tackle clogs, sewer issues and any other plumbing problems. To schedule service, contact us today.