Garbage Disposal Not Working? What to Check Before You Call

Disposals pick the worst moment to quit, and in Chicago that’s the fourth Thursday of November, with a basin full of potato peels and relatives in the next room. Before you call anyone about a garbage disposal not working, listen to it, because a hum and a dead silence point to different fixes. A red reset button and a hex key handle plenty of them. The wall switch goes off before any check, and your hand stays out of the grinding chamber, which InSinkErator states plainly on its support pages.

Match the Sound to the Problem

Your ears do most of the diagnosis here, since a hum and a dead silence point to opposite ends of the unit, and that’s half of how to fix a garbage disposal.

Garbage Disposal Not Turning On: Reset Button, Switch and Breaker

Dead silence is the cheapest symptom on this page, because a garbage disposal not turning on is a power question before it’s a parts question. The wall switch gets one off-and-on first, since the cheapest fix is the one where nothing was broken.

Under the sink, a phone flashlight finds the garbage disposal reset button, a red square on the bottom of the unit, and InSinkErator says a tripped one sits about a quarter inch lower than normal. That’s how to reset garbage disposal units from most brands, a gentle press with the switch off. If it won’t stay in, the motor’s still hot, so give it ten minutes.

Still nothing, and the next stop is the circuit breaker. Plenty of kitchens feed the disposal from a GFCI outlet under the sink, and that outlet has its own reset button and its own moods. If the button and the breaker both check out and the garbage disposal won’t turn on, call an electrician and leave the wiring alone.

Humming but Not Spinning: How to Clear a Jam

If it hums on a Sunday night and nothing spins, a cherry pit or a bottle cap has the flywheel pinned against the impeller plate, and garbage disposal humming is the motor arguing with it.

Under the unit, dead center, sits a hex socket for a 1/4-inch Allen wrench, or for the original InSinkErator crank if it survived your last move. Rock it back and forth until it swings full circles, because InSinkErator’s own instructions say the wrench bends before the disposal gets hurt. Tongs pull the culprit out, and cold water runs before the reset and the switch.

A garbage disposal jammed past the point where a hex key turns it has a jammed motor, and that’s a plumber’s job.

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It Runs, but the Sink Won’t Drain

A disposal spinning happily over a filling sink has handed the problem downstream. In a lot of Chicago kitchens the dishwasher hose shares the same drain line, so a garbage disposal clogged with sludge from the P-trap backs both of them up at once. A cup plunger over the slow drain, with the second basin stoppered, clears the easy cases. The harder ones mean a bucket under the trap and two slip nuts loosened by hand.

Skip the drain chemicals. They sit on top of the clog and then on your hands when the trap comes apart. In a two-flat kitchen the blockage can sit past the trap in a shared drain stack, which is work for our drain cleaning crew.

Garbage Disposal Leaking From the Bottom

A minute of running water over a drip bucket, with a dry paper towel wrapped around the unit, shows where the first drop forms.

• Flange drips mean old putty.
• Side drips point to hoses.
• A loose mounting ring wobbles.
• Bottom drips mean internal seals.

Plumber’s putty for the sink flange runs a few dollars a tub, and a clamp on the dishwasher hose or discharge pipe costs less than lunch. A garbage disposal leaking from the bottom is a different animal, since the internal seal has failed and water is reaching a cracked housing.

Why Chicago Kitchen Drains Clog After Thanksgiving

Every November the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District tells Chicago to put its pipes on a fat-free diet. MWRD advice on holiday grease is refreshingly blunt. Pour the fat into a can and toss it once it’s cool, and wipe the pans with a paper towel before they hit the sink. MWRD also cites a NACWA estimate that fatbergs cost US utilities up to $1 billion a year, a bill the Chicago area has mostly dodged so far.

The EPA data on wasted food counts 66 million tons of food thrown out by US homes and businesses in 2019, with about 60% going to landfills. Your disposal handles a sliver of that, and a few things it handles badly.

• Turkey fat hardens in pipes.
• Coffee grounds pack like sand.
• Potato peels turn to paste.
• Eggshells feed the sludge.
• Celery strings wrap the impeller.

CMAP puts 38.8% of Chicago homes before 1940, and plenty of that is old cast iron drain where fibrous food meets decades of buildup. What MWRD says never goes down the drain starts with food and grease, which makes Thanksgiving cleanup the yearly stress test.

Repair or Replace?

Jams and clogs are repair jobs, and so is a drip at the flange or the hose. A motor that still hums with the flywheel spinning free has reached the end, along with any housing that leaks, and a reset button tripping every few days is the same story.

How long do garbage disposals last depends on the model and what goes in, and we won’t quote a number the manufacturer doesn’t print. Swapping in a 1/2 HP or 3/4 HP replacement unit is a routine garbage disposal replacement for us.

When to Call a Plumber

If your garbage disposal stopped working and the sink stays full after the plunger, or the housing drips, call. A breaker that keeps tripping and a clog that’s back within a week belong on that list too. Our garbage disposal repair in Chicago visits start with the same sound check, and what a plumber costs in Chicago is spelled out on our blog. If the garbage disposal smells fine and the kitchen still reeks, read up on sewer smell from a drain.