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Day two of home ownership: garbage disposal froze and this model doesn't have an allen key underneath to turn it manually. 
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Aug 30, 2021 05:25
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 23:38 |
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Is there a button somewhere else by any chance? I know some older models actually recommend using a wooden spoon handle to manually force it around with the power off obviously. If you're looking for a new one, Costco has a few different models for less than you'll find at home Depot.
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Aug 30, 2021 05:38
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spf3million posted:Day two of home ownership: garbage disposal froze and this model doesn't have an allen key underneath to turn it manually. Just take it off the drain and invert it or get your hand in there. The allen key turner isn't a end all. If you're putting your hand in there unplug it and try the switch to make sure it's dead.
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Aug 30, 2021 06:43
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spf3million posted:Day two of home ownership: garbage disposal froze and this model doesn't have an allen key underneath to turn it manually. This is what you need. https://www.homedepot.com/p/MOEN-Garbage-Disposal-Unjamming-Wrench-1037/301296781 I had one like it, I forget where I bought it,at my last house. Worked well. I think the inside of my old disposal was rusting out or something though because I was having to use it more and more often as time went by. It’s a handy tool but if it gets to jamming up all the time plan on replacing it. It was a super cheap builder grade unit that was 8.5 years old so who knows. You can also try to use something as a lever to manually spin the blades. I wouldn’t put anything you care about down there though.
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Aug 30, 2021 07:30
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gp2k posted:Couple years older but in the same boat--my offer was accepted yesterday and I'm now in escrow. The night after our offer was accepted on our house I stayed up all night, literally sick with worry because I didn’t know where we would put our coats in the house, I genuinely managed about 2 hours of sleep that night as I was so fraught. I told my partner about it in the morning and he very gently reminded me that hooks exist & that the coats could go where ever we wanted.
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Aug 30, 2021 08:33
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Are garbage disposals something that would be worth installing if you don't have one already, or are they more of a "gently caress raking it into the trash, send it down the drain where it'll get chopped up and sent to the city sewer/septic tank" thing? Also is there an electrical wire outlet/whatever that's a better place to go than the local Home Depot/Lowe's for about 250' of 10/2 with ground solid wire? I figure that's far and away the most expensive piece of what's required for connecting the workshop building up to my home's breaker box, but there aren't a whole lot of local places to go for prices (and they all seem to be charging about the same amount).
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Aug 30, 2021 12:38
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My city at least has been trying to push people to install garbage disposals to reduce food waste that ends up in trash
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Aug 30, 2021 12:57
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Electricians get their stuff from electric supply companies but I doubt they'd sell to a random home owner. That stuff's all commodity so it's probably not any cheaper for them either. That's just gonna be expensive no matter what.
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Aug 30, 2021 12:58
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Are garbage disposals something that would be worth installing if you don't have one already, or are they more of a "gently caress raking it into the trash, send it down the drain where it'll get chopped up and sent to the city sewer/septic tank" thing? Use THHN wire its stranded stranded much easier to pull. When I did a project like this I spent a lot of time looking for suppliers for wire and just ended up going to Home depot. Get a 500' spool if you need 250' the 500' spool will likely be cheaper. Edit: seems you're using romex Home depot is a fine place to buy that too.
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Aug 30, 2021 13:21
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Thanks for the disposal advice, never heard of that unjamming tool. I'll go hand fishing first and if it keeps happening, great excuse to buy another little thingamabob.
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Aug 30, 2021 13:38
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Nitrousoxide posted:My city at least has been trying to push people to install garbage disposals to reduce food waste that ends up in trash That's odd, because it's usually the reverse. Sewage treatment plants are expensive to run and maintain, and adding anything solid that isn't poop and toilet paper costs extra money to filter out. It either gets caught by the initial bar filter or settles in the clarifier, but either way, it has to be thrown out anyway. Disposals should be used for the little bits left on dishes that didn't get scraped off into the trash can, not for crap like potato peels and huge amounts of food... unless you like having a plumber on speed dial.
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Aug 30, 2021 14:39
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Kind of related but my girlfriend got a composter recently and it's pretty cool to be able to do something useful with all the bits and pieces of veggies we don't eat. We also started a garden that will make use of the compost when it's ready.
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Aug 30, 2021 14:42
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B-Nasty posted:That's odd, because it's usually the reverse. Tell that to my ex who would always dispose of eggshells down the garbage disposal despite me telling her the plumbing in the house was not up to it.
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Aug 30, 2021 15:06
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I think some people were just raised wrong. I swear to god just yesterday my wife was about to dump about 2 cups of panko bread crumbs that were leftover from some fried chicken down the disposal. She paused to ask me if I was done with them to which I replied, I just needed to take out the trash before I could dump them in a bag without it overflowing. Her family just dumps everything from their plates down the disposal. It's terrible.
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Aug 30, 2021 16:56
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There are definitely a lot of disposal mistakes made, at the same time some of these scenarios seem like a toss up between the garbage can and disposal. Bread crumbs? Nothing is probably going to happen with your plumbing.... it's what the disposal is designed for. Is a disposal worth it if you only use it for the tiniest of scraps once you slide everything into the trash? Random article on this though it doesn't really help the core question: https://www.consumerreports.org/garbage-disposals/foods-you-can-cant-put-down-a-garbage-disposal/ Inner Light fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 17:07
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Since we're on septic yes thats exactly what we use it for. It gets run like once a week.
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Aug 30, 2021 17:10
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aDecentCupOfTea posted:The night after our offer was accepted on our house I stayed up all night, literally sick with worry because I didn’t know where we would put our coats in the house, Spent about half an hour worrying that my cats wouldn't have enough birds to look at given how the windows are oriented. My partner said we could install a bird feeder and that seemed to calm me down. Now I get to be that guy who yells at the squirrels who steal the seeds out of the bird feeder.
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Aug 30, 2021 17:15
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Inner Light posted:There are definitely a lot of disposal mistakes made, at the same time some of these scenarios seem like a toss up between the garbage can and disposal. Bread crumbs? Nothing is probably going to happen with your plumbing.... it's what the disposal is designed for. Is a disposal worth it if you only use it for the tiniest of scraps once you slide everything into the trash? You'll note, of course, that CR isn't commenting on where the sewage actually goes, they're just talking about what will actually make it through the disposal. Disposals probably aren't worth it in most cases. Anything large enough to be ground up should be thrown away, anything that isn't would probably just go down the pipe without needing the disposal. Heavy use of disposals is a classic 'tragedy of the commons' problem. Nobody gives a poo poo (intended) about what/how much they send to the sewage plant, but it ultimately costs everyone more money in sewer bills. My local NextDoor is currently up-in-arms about the local wastewater utility upping their rates by 40%, to well over $1000/year. Coming soon to a town near you!
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Aug 30, 2021 17:28
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Source4Leko posted:Since we're on septic yes thats exactly what we use it for. It gets run like once a week. I'm on septic and a very heavy garbage disposal user for food scraps, especially vegetables. I wouldn't think twice about firing leftover panko down there. It's pumped every three years and completely and totally fine. Anyone who is worried about their septic system isn't maintaining it properly. Which is most people. It takes more than just pumping. When you start worrying about "what will go down", etc you have a legitimate plumbing issue that is not going to get better on it's own.
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Aug 30, 2021 17:36
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Motronic posted:I'm on septic and a very heavy garbage disposal user for food scraps, especially vegetables. I wouldn't think twice about firing leftover panko down there. I was always told that food waste isn't a great idea on septic. Also thanks for reminding me were gonna need ours pumped in the next year or so. Our system is oversized for how we're using it now especially compared to the previous owners and they only had it pumped every 5 years tho. Also had the tank lid open with a plumber 2 years ago and everything looked fine? But I didn't really know what I was looking at other than a tank of poo poo. Source4Leko fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 17:54
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Source4Leko posted:I was always told that food waste isn't a great idea on septic. Also thanks for reminding me were gonna need ours pumped in the next year or so. Yes, that's a thing I hear a lot. Some garbage disposals even have some sort of injector thing that you keep filling up to put some mystery stuff down the drain every time you use it. Just like with every other homeowner treatment to put down your drain into your septic: don't use it. A properly working septic system does not need any of this. A properly working septic system has no problem with food scraps. I've been doing this for most of my life across several septic systems. The commonality is that they were all: - Properly sized - Properly installed - Properly maintained - Nobody put things down the drain that absolutely, positively can't be put down there. The #1 biggest problem would be any sort of antibiotics, bur really anything that will kill off the bacteria that make properly working septic systems function. You're running an anaerobic biological matter processing system. When it runs properly food waste turns into almost nothing. Poop turns into almost nothing. Pumping takes out the rest. Every three years.....even every 5 years is sufficient when everything else is working. There shouldn't be more than a foot or two of sludge at the bottom, most of which is "new" and hasn't broken down completely. The bulk of my septic problems have been related to the actual plumbing - lateral to the tank wasn't installed properly, got bellied in the middle and would slowly clog - this happened twice at two different places - easily correct with a backhoe and some stone - or the water chemistry - ours will rot concrete particularly the "d-box", which I replaced with a plastic one several years ago but not long enough ago to say whether it's better/longer lasting than concrete yet.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:03
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Maybe I'm just on the opposite side of the garbage disposal use case spectrum. Particularly when the choice is effortlessly dump the panko in the trash vs dump it in the sink then have to spray all around the sink to get the panko bits in the disposal and run it a couple times. The do / do not list is great - we always make sure to drain grease into a can which goes into the freezer until full and then in the trash.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:06
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Motronic posted:I'm on septic and a very heavy garbage disposal user for food scraps, especially vegetables. I wouldn't think twice about firing leftover panko down there. I read this as 3 times a year at first and my eyebrows hit the ceiling.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:09
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We throw all our food scraps into a bag for collection by our city's "organics recycling" (aka: industrial compost) but still planning on getting a disposal eventually, for rinsing out the sink strainer, or when I soak a pot with some dried up gunk, and then the sink is full of big puffy soaked rice or other food scraps in water.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:16
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I treat my septic as gently as I can, since it's older than I am. Scraping food in the trash is just as easy as sending it down the drain, and oils/fats should be minimized in drains anyway, and those are more of a pain to wipe off than food bits. Worse for a septic is laundry lint. It's often non-biodegradable (nylon/poly), and it can get suspended in water easily, which means it has a good chance of getting out to the drainfield. I use a filter at my washer outlet into the laundry sink, and a filter at your septic's outlet baffle isn't a bad idea either.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:17
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extravadanza posted:Maybe I'm just on the opposite side of the garbage disposal use case spectrum. Particularly when the choice is effortlessly dump the panko in the trash vs dump it in the sink then have to spray all around the sink to get the panko bits in the disposal and run it a couple times. The do / do not list is great - we always make sure to drain grease into a can which goes into the freezer until full and then in the trash. Yeah, grease is another one but for a different reason. Grease will break down, but grease floats. The primary way your septic box separates solids from "processed" water that is ready to go into your leach field is with a screen between the first and second chamber of your tank. The solids are supposed to settle into the chambers to be processed. Since grease floats it will either or both get on the screen, cool down and clog it or just plain on pass through to the second chamber, where it will continue to float and go right out into your field eventually. This is less a septic box issue than it is a "I blew my field" issue, which is WAY crapper to fix than just pumping/cleaning the box so it can reestablish it's biological filter.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:18
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Motronic posted:Yes, that's a thing I hear a lot. Some garbage disposals even have some sort of injector thing that you keep filling up to put some mystery stuff down the drain every time you use it. Yea so far our only septic problem was plumbing, we had a clog that my wife had to call someone for since I was out of town and they only moved the clog to jam in the clean out, so when the plumbers opened that the 2nd trip out we got a minor poo volcano. Only way to clear it was to snake it from the septic tank side. Were lucky with house now because it was a custom build house in the late 50's and whoever built it built it to last forever, and all the previous owners were great about maintaining it. The immediate previous owners had 4 family members 2 of which never left the house and they still got by with pumping every 4 years I think. Will either be a late fall or early spring thing depends on how much the arborist I have to call sets me back.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:19
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B-Nasty posted:I treat my septic as gently as I can, since it's older than I am. Scraping food in the trash is just as easy as sending it down the drain, and oils/fats should be minimized in drains anyway, and those are more of a pain to wipe off than food bits. Our slop sink/ washing machine drain into our sump pump pit which avoids all that. Supposed to be done that way? No but every house on my street is done that way.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:21
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B-Nasty posted:Worse for a septic is laundry lint. It's often non-biodegradable (nylon/poly), and it can get suspended in water easily, which means it has a good chance of getting out to the drainfield. I use a filter at my washer outlet into the laundry sink, and a filter at your septic's outlet baffle isn't a bad idea either. It also causes a lot of turbulence due to the water volume being discharged all at once, especially on older top loading machines. Turbulence in a box that is intended to settle out solids is obviously not a good thing. We use a front loading HE washer and modern slow as crap but barely uses any water dishwasher. This helps with both the septic AND the well.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:23
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Source4Leko posted:Our slop sink/ washing machine drain into our sump pump pit which avoids all that. Supposed to be done that way? No but every house on my street is done that way. Illegal in my state of PA to drain gray water on the ground. You can drain it to a separate system, but it basically has to be a mini-septic system that's inspected/permitted and all that jazz.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:25
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B-Nasty posted:Illegal in my state of PA to drain gray water on the ground. You can drain it to a separate system, but it basically has to be a mini-septic system that's inspected/permitted and all that jazz. Probably is here too. Basically nothing I do has to be inspected since I'm out of city limits. My neighbors did an additon on their house and the county wouldn't even issue them a permit since they said they didn't need one. Only for new dwellings I guess lol. Source4Leko fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 18:28
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We've got a 2-story Cape Cod, built in 1949. It's got central air. The attic insulation got replaced about 3-4 years ago. The 2nd floor is hot as gently caress in the summer. We only use it as home offices since COVID, and will continue to do so since our workplaces are continuing or moving us to full remote. We're using window ACs to make it tolerable, and space heaters in the winter. It's not as awfully cold in the winter, just crazy hot in the summer. Is getting split ducts installed worth it? Our HVAC company gave a rough idea of $7k-$8k for the two rooms. We're paying around $240-$280/mo in the summer, $120-$150/mo in the winter. Seems like unless it works miracles with efficiency, it'd take 10+ years to break even.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:31
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So I haven’t houseposted in a while but after a long 4 months of reno we’re finally almost at the point where we can move in. Getting the floors redone throughout the whole second floor and a few rooms on the first. The finish is going to be matte but the guy just did the last coat this morning and my wife snagged a picture before it even had a chance to dry. Looks kinda wild fresh off the brush/squeegee/however the gently caress you put sealer on a floor:
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Aug 30, 2021 18:36
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Source4Leko posted:Probably is here too. Basically nothing I do has to be inspected since I'm out of city limits. My neighbors did an additon on their house and the county wouldn't even issue them a permit since they said they didn't need one. Only for new dwellings I guess lol. That's not a county issue permit/concern. It's state department of health, same as septic.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:43
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Motronic posted:- Nobody put things down the drain that absolutely, positively can't be put down there. The #1 biggest problem would be any sort of antibiotics, bur really anything that will kill off the bacteria that make properly working septic systems function. Is there any worry of antibiotics getting into the system through your pee while taking a course of them? I suspect not since modern versions have higher bioavailabilty and less is passed out through urine, but curious if that's something known or not.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:44
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Spikes32 posted:Is there any worry of antibiotics getting into the system through your pee while taking a course of them? I suspect not since modern versions have higher bioavailabilty and less is passed out through urine, but curious if that's something known or not. I've never heard of that as an issue. The stories I have heard have always been people dumping "leftover" antibiotics down the drain, which is bad for septic and bad for the human race (not taking the entire course of your antibiotics is on way antibiotic resistant strains get into the wild).
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Aug 30, 2021 18:48
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What's the story for folks in rural areas where the wastewater lines for the laundry system dump everything into the septic? Seems like detergents and bleach would wreck that system. Or is that why people dump Rid-X into the tank every few weeks? EDIT: Also I know some people that had to have the entire system cleaned out because they were dumping cooking grease down the drain with no regard for how that would thicken up and eventually clog the drain lines because lines between the sink and the septic were long enough that no amount of heat would keep the grease above the temps where it would solidify before it got to the tank. Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 18:59
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MJP posted:We've got a 2-story Cape Cod, built in 1949. It's got central air. The attic insulation got replaced about 3-4 years ago. The 2nd floor is hot as gently caress in the summer. We only use it as home offices since COVID, and will continue to do so since our workplaces are continuing or moving us to full remote. We're using window ACs to make it tolerable, and space heaters in the winter. It's not as awfully cold in the winter, just crazy hot in the summer. I'm not sure what 'split ducts' are, but your options are likely the following: 1. Install dampers/balance and minor duct work to force more air upstairs during the Summer 2. Keep the window shakers and live with it 3. Install a mini split with multiple heads for the rooms 4. Install a separate system in the attic 5. Completely redo all ductwork to better balance the air flow Personally, I put a big premium on comfort. I can't stand the noise of window AC units, but if it doesn't really bother you, that's probably the cheapest upfront option that is guaranteed to work.
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Aug 30, 2021 19:02
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I thought window AC units were horrifically inefficient on the power bill side of things?
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Aug 30, 2021 19:06
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 23:38 |
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biracial bear for uncut posted:What's the story for folks in rural areas where the wastewater lines for the laundry system dump everything into the septic? Seems like detergents and bleach would wreck that system. Or is that why people dump Rid-X into the tank every few weeks? Detergents and bleach, in reasonable amounts, aren't a problem for a well-functioning septic. The tank is usually 1000g+, so some bleach in your laundry is like pissing into the ocean. I saw somewhere where they tested it, and it took over 2 gallons of bleach dumped into the septic at one time to disrupt the bacteria... so don't do that. biracial bear for uncut posted:I thought window AC units were horrifically inefficient on the power bill side of things? That's why I added 'upfront'. Window units are like the equivalent of 10-12 SEER (at best), so they're not as efficient as a split/mini split system. However, they're cheap, ubiquitous, and relatively reliable. If it costs $200 more to run it per season, that will pay for a bunch of years to equal the install costs of a minisplit.
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Aug 30, 2021 19:24
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