Care & feeding of a Franke disposer

[David A. Goldfarb]

Disposals became legal in NYC during the Giuliani administration. New Yorkers still have some residual fear of them, even though they have long been almost as common as indoor toilets just about everywhere else in the US.

[brucesw]

I've gotten conflicting advice from plumbers over the years about c&f of disposals: run chicken bones through, don't ever put chicken bones in. Coffee grounds, egg shells - yes, coffee grounds and egg shells - worst thing you can put into a disposal. The host of a call in home-repair show offered the observation that plumbers make a living by coming out to fix your plumbing problems. Why should they give you free advice that will eliminate the need to call them?

I think the mechanism involves hammers, not blades, actually. There's nothing sharp in there. They pulverize waste, they don't slice or chop it. Still doesn't make it okay to stick your fingers down there when it's running, of course, but there is nothing to be 'sharpened' by putting bones or ice down there. I never understood how that worked, anyway. My knives don't get sharper from cutting harder objects.

There should be no problem with carrot peelings or egg shells with a new disposal but the big enemy over time is water. They rust out. This will happen whether you use it to get rid of waste or just run water through it. The tank will rust and it will start leaking, or, as has happened to me more often, the grate rusts and larger and larger particles pass through. The grate, underneath the revolving hammers, controls the size of the particles that will pass through. As it rusts, the holes enlarge. Last time I changed out one with that problem, 20 + years ago, whole, cooked artichoke leaves were passing through and had created an 8" clog of the drain hose leading to the main drain pipe. They had been totally unaltered by the hammers.

My advice is, if you've got one, use it. It will wear out sooner or later anyway and then you can decide, based on personal experience, whether it's worth replacing or you want to have the drain reconfigured back to a regular drain set up.

Mine (Insinkerator) rusted out and stopped up about three years ago. Water takes forever to pass through so I've got a marble cutting board over that sink and I get by without it. I don't plan to replace it but just haven't gotten around to calling a plumber to reconfigure the drain.

BTW, besides artichoke leaves, don't put corn husks, corn silk or banana leaves down one, either, probably even if it's brand new.

We get a multi-lingual flyer several times a year from the City (Water Department) saying never put any kind of fat down a drain, disposal equipped or not, neither liquid nor solid fat.

Edited April 23, 2011 by brucesw (log)

[OliverB]

I hardly ever use mine. Spoke my plumber about them once, his advice was "if you can grab it, throw it away" which is really quite easy to do, it's just food stuff, not dog poop

He also said to never run hot water while grinding, as it softens fats and oils that then cool and deposit in your pipes. Not good.

I really don't see the point of them, I peel right into the trash or if it's stuff like onion skin etc, it's on the counter and a quick swoop into the lifted up trash can takes care of that.

I also don't ever rinse dishes before they go in the dishwasher, all modern dishwashers have their own grinder and - so I've read - actually work better with some food stuff on the dishes. But mainly it seems silly to me to wash stuff half way and then wash it again.

Just because it's there, doesn't mean you need to use it, and if you made do for all these years without, why change your procedures?

I can now even throw food waste into the green garbage can for composting, seems a much better idea than throwing yet more stuff at the water treatment plants, where it all will end up on the landfill anyways, probably on a toxic waste one actually.

[maggiethecat]

I'm with Toliver.

Me three -- I use it to rinse off dinner plates and for eggshells and that's about it. That said, I miss the disposal when I'm working in a kitchen without one.

I'll chime in with others here from bitter experience: nothing will back up a disposal faster than raw artichoke leaves. They also blew out a new blender in about five seconds when I decided to liquefy them before trotting out to the compost heap.

[RobertCollins]

Here in Seattle we have a great City Compost program. I almost never use our two disposals. We dump about five gallons of kitchen waste per week. Add to that that green waste; pizza boxes, almost any paper product like paper towels and napkins and yes we can even throw meat products into the mix.{That is OK in the winter but too stinky in the rest of the year.}

Our Sewerage Dept. says that it takes 13 gallons of water for the system to process one pound of disposal offal.

I think I'd rather use my Vita-Mix and pour the "slurry" down the toilet.

[PetersCreek]

I've never understood the myth about ice "sharpening" disposer blades. It would be like putting your chef's knive and steel in a box and shaking vigorously.

[DickL]

There are at least three different kinds of disposers, which I don't know the proper names for, but which have either blades (think of a blender), a cast iron plate with bumps/vanes on it, and a flat plate with swinging "hammers" attached to it. I believe the blade type is obsolete, but there still could be some around. They definitely do not handle bones.

In our previous residence, we had the type with the cast iron plate with protrusions on the top. It ground up stuff by batting it against the inside of the chamber and was pretty effective on most things, but it gagged consistently on onion peels.

In our current place we have the flat plate plus hammer type (Kitchen Aid by brand), which is quite effective against pretty much any organic material. It handles peelings of all types, including onion, small bones, peach pits, whatever. Hard stuff like peach pits create a lot of noise, but eventually get ground down. (The Wikipedia article on disposers has a picture of the plate/hammer assembly, a diagram, and a pretty good description of this type.)

On another topic, I think maybe "Disposal" is/was a brand name which got made generic, and "disposer" is the general term for any brand.

[cookingofjoy]

I will rinse my meal dishes and pots and pans on the disposal side of the sink and the disposal will grind the bits and pieces all up and send them on their merry way. When I wash dishes by hand, the dishwater gets dumped down the disposal side of the sink.

This is mainly how we use ours, too. I hate cleaning the catch basket after washing dishes. It's also nice for the forgotten leftovers And I'll second or third using citrus to freshen it.