Home Improvement Stories: The Mad Handyman Changes Out the Disposal

A year or so ago our garbage disposal became possessed. It had the classic symptoms of an appliance infested by the devil's spawn. It clattered, shook, spewed green pea soup randomly, and if it were not fastened in by the brass drain pipes I'm sure it would have levitated.

Last week one of the teeth broke off and jammed in the mechanism, and the poltergeists finally left. The beast had finally expired. The wife and I promptly hopped in the car and made a pilgrimage to Home Depot to offer a sacrifice to the gods of commerce. We were rewarded with a massive one horse power disposal, the most expensive one in the place. The guy at the store gave me some great pointers, which I didn't listen to, as usual.

I hauled the new device home and put it on the fireplace hearth where it sat for a week.

Each day I walked into the living room and gave the new disposal my most intimidating stare to let it know that I was not going to put up with any rebellious appliance nonsense from it. It just smirked back at me.

On the following Sunday I proceeded to tear out the old disposal, along with the former drain system. I'd bought new brass drain pipes of every configuration possible to replace the old plastic stuff. I figure I may not be able to do things right, but I can at least do them expensively. After all, it's not important to have the "best", it's critical, however, to be able to say you have the "most expensive".

I happen to know a little bit about plumbing, and was keenly aware that there would be old, stinky water trapped in the "P trap" section of the drain. So I carefully removed that section so as not to pour stale drain water all over the floor. I eased it out from under the sink, proud that I'd not spilled one drop, then did what I always do, I held the old drain assembly over the sink and dumped the water out.

Cold, smelly drain water splashed over my bare feet and onto the kitchen floor instead of running through the drain pipes I'd just removed.

During the mop up, I found what my wife said was an old chicken bone under the sink that she claimed one of the cats dragged under there. I'm pretty sure it was no chicken bone. I believe it was positive proof that there is an old midget Indian burial ground under our kitchen.

I proceeded to install the new disposal, finding as I did so that the various pieces of brass drain pipe and fittings I'd bought could not be configured to match up for proper connection. I ended up with what I thought was a really cool two-tone mixture of white plastic and brass pipe. The wife didn't appreciate the esthetics and just worried that the contraption might leak at one of the proliferated joints.

After an hour of lying on my back and banging my head on the underside of the sink I finally had that new disposal in and running. I ran water down it and did a preliminary test and it managed to chew up and dispose of the water just fine. Then I started looking for something a little more substantial to test with. Finding nothing, (the wife runs a clean house) I finally decided to check the refrigerator. A couple of stalks of good celery and some other vegetables (which I would never eat) went into the machine and the sewer system got its V8 for the day. The wife was curious about where the makings for her afternoon salad went, but I'm pretty sure I got away with it, and it's a testament to the efficiency and power of the new appliance that there was no evidence.

Two days later we finally got around to running the dishwasher for the first time since I'd connected its discharge hose to the new disposal. After it ran, I opened the dishwasher to find it full of cloudy water and bits of food. That's when I remembered the guy at the store telling me, "Make sure you don't forget to knock out the plug for the dishwasher connection if you're going to discharge it into the disposal before you mount this thing..."

I never listen to the guys in the store.