My Crazy Pittsburgh Garbage Disposal Installation DIY Story
Is a Garbage Disposal Really Necessary?
For the most part, it tends to be after people see the price tag on some of the high-end garbage disposal models that they begin to question if having one installed in their home is really necessary?
Of course, cheaper models are always available in stock. Still, then when you tack on the 15% veteran’s discount that’s offered by the two dominant players in the big box hardware business, they become surprisingly affordable. Still on the other far end of the price spectrum are the top models that can cost upwards and even over $1,000, with some commercial garbage disposals going even higher.
That’s a heck of a lot of money for something that’s used to grind stuff up and flush down the drain anyway. So then the big question that needs to be asked is why, with rare exceptions, is there a garbage disposal in pretty much every house on the block?
The answer, it turns out, is that it all comes down to basic biology 101. Your garbage disposals job is to mince up then send along down the drain all the trimmings created by meal preparation that will otherwise quickly begin to decay if they remain in the home.
It’s essential to keep in mind that garbage pickup comes only once a week, and seven days is a heck of a long time to store strawberries that have turned moldy meat scraps, and the leftover green salad from yesterday’s supper that has become brown and wilted.
Now, if you perhaps lived in a rural setting, leftovers and food scraps might make good duck and chicken feed, but for most folks, that just isn’t the case. So rather than seeing their garbage can become a fly farm, people, in general, tend to opt for having a garbage disposal installed in their kitchen sink.
I learned all this when I and my ex-husband bought a fixer home ten years ago, before the divorce, in the next town over. So along with it, everything else in need of repair came old worn-out garbage disposal that sounded like a freight train running off the tracks when the switch on the wall was flipped.
My husband was quick to point out that we’ve been doing everything else ourselves, so then why not let him have a crack at installing the new garbage disposal?
Besides, he explained that his cousin is one of the top plumbers in Pittsburgh, PA, and that he works at Kwiatowski Plumbing, so if he ran into a problem, he could call on him for advice at 412-681-9525. I reluctantly agreed, and with that, off he went to the hardware store to get the ball rolling and hopefully get the thing up and running that day.
Pittsburgh Garbage Disposal Hard Lessons Learned
Before he started in, though, I wanted to know, are garbage disposals bad for plumbing? After all, the old existing unit, aside from vibrating and all the noise it created, was also leaking water, even when it wasn’t on.
So a few hours later, along with brand new garbage disposal, he arrived back home with an answer to my question. Are garbage disposals bad for plumbing? It turns out to be no, and that it was the man working the plumbing aisle at the store who told him that they weren’t.
Just as long as it was only food scraps and trimmings that we put down it, along with enough water to flush everything away. So he unpacked everything that came in the box, spread it out on the kitchen floor, started in on his project, and right away, he ran into trouble.
It turns out that removing an old leaky worn-out garbage disposal is no glamour job. To do it required him to lay on his back and then scoot the upper half of his body from the chest up into the lower kitchen cabinet then, disconnect the plumbing and somehow disconnect and remove the unit.
But the problem was that when he disconnected the main drain pipe, evidently, there was backed up putrid greywater that was ejected directly into his face with some going into his mouth. It had a faint odor similar to that of raw sewage, and to add insult to injury, he had managed to somehow swallow the entire mouthful.
So after he returned from rushing out to get a tetanus shot, he finished removing the existing unit, and it was then that we finally got a look inside to see what caused it to fail. It turned out the water leak was coming from a crack in the side of it.
It was caused by something hard that had fallen or been put down into it when the previous owners occupied the home. Probably something made of metal. At least that’s what his cousin at Kwiatowski Plumbing told us.
He said that he sees this occasionally. When the switch was flipped on, whatever it was got thrown against the inside wall by the rotor, and that’s what caused the small crack. Also, if you’re wondering how one of the finest plumbers in Pittsburgh PA ended up examining the old garbage disposal, it’s because we hired them to complete the job.
It turns out that working on an older home’s wastewater drain line is just asking for a nasty staph infection as we discovered the hard way that the wastewater my husband gulped down contains a whole host of seriously toxic bacteria.
The nurse at the clinic where he got his tetanus shot told him that people have even died from infections caused by swallowing what was essentially sewer water. The stuff is that chock-full of germs.
I’m also no longer wondering how much does a garbage disposal installation typically costs in Pittsburgh. The answer, it turns out, came with the bill for the emergency room visit they were able to compare with the final bill for having Kwiatowski Plumbing the job. Would you believe that the cost of the tetanus shot was twice as much?