Friday afternoon was replace the garbage disposal day. On the way home from work we stopped in at Home Depot and bought a Badger 5 and a 12″ long 1-1/2 diameter metal flanged pipe to replace the eroded original.
Right up front I caught a break, Insinkerator has not changed their sink flange/mount in the intervening decades since the old disposal was produced. I got to skip the first dozen steps because I didn’t have to remove the old sink drain/flange and install a new one. Little did I know this was the last break I’d get until the next day.
Unhooking the electricals and rewiring the new disposal went smoothly and in flash the unit was mounted to the sink. I took the old pipe and the new one into the garage, dug out my $1.98 hack saw, measured the old pipe, transferred that number to the new pipe and cut it off. Crawled under the sink and mounted the new discharge pipe to the disposal. Uh, oh. It was too short, it didn’t reach the drain pipe on the other sink. The new disposal was a couple inches smaller in diameter than the old.
At this point I have to interject an observation, both my wife and I agree that it took 3 trips to HD to complete the job, but neither of us can remember what the second two entailed exactly.
Not only was the pipe too short, but it was misaligned vertically as well. Back to the store for more pipe. I could get another 12″ metal pipe, but there were no metal T sections for under the second sink to be found, so we ended up with three pieces of plastic 1-1/2 pipe. I also spent $6.50 on a new hack saw.
At home I measured twice and cut once and got everything back together. Now for the test. We ran the tap and hit the switch. No leakage at the disposal to sink and disposal to outlet pipe, but that pesky u-trap was dripping pretty good. I tried two different types washers (a hard plastic wedge and a square rubber gasket) with no help. I put a wrench on the normally hand tighten joint and even that didn’t do any good. After about three hours of monkeying around it was decided to just clean up and leave a plastic bin under the u-trap and revisit it another day.
When we looked in on the bin on Saturday it was dry. Huh? Ran some more water, spun the disposal and there was no leak anymore. Cool.
The only problem with these spontaneous cures is wondering when they might spontaneously fail.
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 191
Fourd Seasons – a car sculpture next to Carhenge in Alliance, NE.