Remedies for Disposer Smell?

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rp2813

rp2813

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Joined
Jun 16, 2006
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It's not horrible, but my disposer has developed a foul stink, probably from misuse when my mom was still living here and having caretakers doing the cooking and cleaning.

 

I've tried the "Plink" balls but they don't provide any lasting effect.  I've also stood by as the dishwasher drains from a wash cycle and have run the disposer while that is happening. 

 

I'd appreciate any suggestions for eliminating the odor permanently.  The disposer works fine.  I'm guessing it's a 20-25 year old Kenmore.
 
Run it with lots of dishwashing detergent or even some scoops of laundry detergent and a little water, to fill it lots of suds. (if you have 2 sinks maybe the other will start to fill with suds) Turn off the disposer and let it soak for a few minutes. You can also use toothpaste... your disposer's smile will be bright and the breath will be fresh LOL.
Then dispose lots of ice and then some lemons. Fill it with the lemons before you turn it on, so you'll have time to get enough splash inside it.

At least once a week, fill the biggest pan you have with water, boil it, turn on the disposer and throw the water in the sink all at once. it helps rinsing some light residue.

Sometimes dispose some hard foods like bones or dry beans, to "sand" the chamber.
And remember disposers are not HE top loaders. always use lots of water while disposing and keep it running for a few more seconds after you hear the garbage is gone.

The splash guard must be washed almost every day.

That's what I do here. It's breath is always good.
 
I occasionally will do a "power flush" of the disposal. I fill the sink with hot water and liquid dish detergent such as dawn or palmolive right to the top. turn on the disposal and open the drain. It shakes rattles and rolls and sucks the water very quickly down the drain. Cleans the disposal and give a good boost through the drains and cleans them also. This eliminates the smell. Also I take the splash guard out and run that through the dishwasher on the top rack. It is amazing what collects on the bottome of that.
Jon
 
Most of your odor is probably coming from grime stuck in all the nooks and crannies....and the hard part is trying to keep it filled while solutions like bleach water, or heavy duty cleaners work on getting rid of it.....

several things I do at Moms, 2 ex-large pots of boiling water, with bleach, one for the beginning and one for the end.....I use either toilet bowl cleaner, or purple cleaner, squired all inside, and use a wraparound kitchen brush, similar to a toilet brush, and scrub the inside, then with the sprayer, rinse thoroughly with hottest water, and then again with the last pan of boiling water....you shouldn't mix chemicals, but there are times you need joined forces to knock it out....

heck I even poured bleach and ammonia in there at the same time.......keep windows open....and stand back....but it clears out everything....drain pipes and all....

theres always a build up in these things, not just in the grinding chamber, but under the wheel, and the pipe leading to the trap, areas you can't get to....now, if we could get water to stay in there, simple denture tablets would probably work....ammonia and baking soda would foam up, but not strong enough to kill the bacteria and odors for long....
 
Here's what I do

Put the stopper in and fill the sink to the top with the hottest water you can stand.  The reason you have to make it that you can stand is you will have to reach in and pull the stopper.

Add about a cup of good ole fashion Liquid Chlorine Bleach. 

Turn the disposer on, and pull the stopper. 

The abundance of hot water, the bleach, and the swirling action of the disposer will clean the grinding chamber out and flush what's stuck.  You may have to repeat a few times. but . . .Walla fresh and clean.

 

White Vinigar works too.

 
 
Before Power Flush

Dump a whole box of backing soda in the disposer.  Add two cups of hot vinegar(heated for 2 min in microwave) then put the cap on.  Wait ten minute and complete your power flush!

 

Malcolm
 
hot water dangers

Hot water will remove more grease; but it will cool down and now cling to the sewer pipes.

It works with rental house and apartments; the problem is the landlords! :)

With your own house hot water just creates another problem; sewer clogs.

A soap that works at room temp is what you should try; and hot water if you want to go against 100 plus years of plumbing advice.
 
My disposer gets that way from time to time, but I usually fill the sink with hot water, baking soda and dish soap, let it cool down for a bit, take the stopper out of the drain and turn on the disposer. Odor gone!

I've also taken out the rubber "gizmo" from the disposer and found all sorts of "lovely" green mold on it. I cover it with Comet or baking soda and give it a good scrubbing with a Tuffy or SOS pad. This is usually done every couple of weeks.
 
Disposer floss

I'd go to the local hardware store and buy some old LYE drain cleaner crystals.  Wear rubber gloves and goggles. Put a tablespoon of the lye into the disposer and CAREFULLY pour boiling water into the disposer, keeping your face as far away from this operation as possible. Run the disposer with more boiling water and see if that doesn't do the trick.  If not repeat a couple of times.This is what we do at work once in a while. This is why it's good to run hard things like bones and mussel shells through the disposer once in a while to grind away some of the plaque. You might also want to check your drain traps because it may not be the disposer at all and somehow sewer gas is leaking up.
 
Re; hot water down kitchen disposal

One is free to wash down and use boiling hot water down a gunked up with grease disposal.. it keeps plumbers in business! :)

What happens is that grease and lard you melt and free up goes so only so far; then it cools off and redeposits on one's sewers pipes as buildup.

You just "move the problem downstream".

If one is a renter; one can too just dump that cooking grease down the disposal; since as renter you have your rich landlord pay for the sewer cleanout. ie your short term view is he will not raise your rent if repair costs go up.

As a renter; you have no concerns if all that hot water will cool down in pipes causing fats and grease to coagulate. ie your goals are all short term; no concerns of long term damage downstream.

There are reasons that in plumbing a grease trap is installed in many applications.

If ones goals are all short term; then that buildup downstream is avoided; ie you move on and let others pay for your poor habits.

http://www.dallascityhall.com/dwu/Pretreatment/faqs3.html
 
Nobody says one has to follow a product,s instructons

When we got our first Garbage disposal back in the 1950's it's instructions mentioned the same as today's wiki link item #6 :

"Don't use hot water, because it can melt fat and allow it to re-solidify as a blockage further down in the drain."

These instructions are nothing new. Grease clogged sewers 500 years ago too.



http://www.wikihow.com/Maintain-a-Garbage-Disposal
 
Lye?

Lye will begin to deteriorate the seals in the disposal and eventually, you'll replace it with a minty fresh new one.

 

Malcolm

 
 
Nobody says one has to follow a product,s instructons

When we got our first Garbage disposal back in the 1950's it's instructions mentioned the same as today's wiki link item #6 :

"Don't use hot water, because it can melt fat and allow it to re-solidify as a blockage further down in the drain."

These instructions are nothing new. Grease clogged sewers 500 years ago too.

http://www.wikihow.com/Maintain-a-Garbage-Disposal
 
Thanks for all of the great suggestions.

 

I have two issues:  1) The splash guard is not removable (I make sure to clean under each "tab" when I scrub the sink) and 2) There is no stopper.

 

I can probably devise a stopper or find one that will fit.  This is a large single sink with disposer in the middle.  Due to the age of the house and sewer pipes, and the issue of a 90-degree turn that has a history of causing problems under the house, my mom stopped putting any major quantities of solid material down the disposer many years ago.  No doubt, there is plaque  build-up that some grindable items would help to clear, but while it's not grease, the debris could easily cause that same old clog to re-occur at the 90-degree turn. 

 

I use the disposer to handle miscellaneous chunks of stuff that may end up in it, but have a strainer that catches most items first, which I empty into the garbage.  Now I'm wondering if not using the disposer for bigger tasks is the cause of the smell.

 

I'll try what's been suggested above, and I'm confident one of the methods will take care of the problem.
 
use rid x

When I lived in Florida I had that problem, A neighor suggested pouring a box of rid x ( the spepic tank stuff) into the diposal moisten it a litte and let it set over night. It removed all the odor and grease! Must be the enzymes!

http://www.rid-x.com/
 
3 belt westy-----

As a renter, and as a responsible renter, I am dismayed by your insinuation that all tenants are irresponsible and do not care about the landlord's property. I do a better job of maintaining this property than my landlord does, and I am about to sink over a hundred dollars into capital improvements, including better lighting in the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Drop ceiling with flourescents(sp). I am having new fixtures put in.

I have replaced the kitchen faucet, I have had the front door rehung and weather-stripped, I had the washer and dryer connections put in, I replaced the showerhead with a low water one--I could increase the list!......

It has been my experience (and this is ONLY my experience)--being a renter since 1996--that landlords who think all their tenants are lazy and destructive tend to get lazy and destructive tenants.

In future, please try not to tar all renters with the same brush.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
My 2 cents on disposals.........

Grind several handfuls, or even a binful of ice cubes. Someone may have mentioned this, but I don't remember seeing it.

I have heard about ice cubes from many plumbers. I do not currently have a disposer, but when I did, I did send ice down on a regular basis.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
Renters

Lawerence;

A neighbor in California in the a mirrored apartment to mine use to run hot water down the disposal and dump grease down there too. Thus one comes home to find ones kitchen sink overflowing; since the neighbor used a plunger and forced the barf looking food into ones apartment. I had that happen 4 to 5 times in a high rent apartment, in an exclusive area. My experience is that renters tear up stuff and do not give a damn. Thus you and I can be goodie two shoes as a renter and do ZERO damage and other rotten renters do massive damage.

An associate of mine had 5 rental houses. He always had renters tearing stuff up.; One renter had a cat, that was suppose to be a house cat. It turned out to be a mountain lion. The big cat pooped and peed and tore the whole house up. The cat did its business in the living room. The Los Angeles experts who rid houses of dead corpse smells could not rid the house of the cats odor even with thousands spent. To FIX the problem involved jack hammering about a 14x16 foot section of the slab; since the concrete held the big male cat's urine smell. It cost about 45K two decades ago to fix that rental house. The real animals were the renters. :) ie was not their house thus they tore it up.

In cars; one place I worked had our clients folks who arrived go out for breaks in the parking lot trying to break their rental cars. They would rev the engines full throttle and have the brakes on and get the car to go back and forth fore and aft and make the care move sideways as it learched. The air would be full of burned automatic transmission fluid. They worked at a very respected well known company.

In California at my apartment complex the other renters tore up the washers and dryers in short order, thus most never worked. Some scummy types would place BM in the dryers; thus they stank and were not usable. This was at a place that was high rent too.

In Equipment rentals; shops want robust tools since renters sometimes are very hard on tools
 
As far as a grease; some landlords prefer enzymes versus hot water and moving the grease down further to cool and clump/re-solidify.

Just unplugging the disposal and wiping the inside wall will often remove crud that is stuck.

In my Apartment heydays the apartment repair guy would place another 29 buck Badger 1 disposal in an Apartment once somebody complained or the apartment was vacated. The replaced the dishwashers like this too; they cost about 170 bucks wholesale.

If one does serious cooking and owns ones home on can add a grease trap; or design the plumbing to be cleaned out with ease to remove that grease.
 
Ralph, is the P-trap under the sink holding water to prevent sewer gas from coming up through the disposer drain? Also, have you checked the drains under the house to make sure there isn't a sanitary leak down there causing the off odors?

Personally I don't think the small amounts of grease on dirty dishes/pans in the dishwasher would be a problem, especially if they are saponified by action of the alkaline dishwasher detergent. Same with grease in the dishpan - add enough detergent to solubilize it before draining. Of course, any large amounts of grease (such as after cooking bacon etc) should be discarded in the trash, compost pile, or saved to make soap or explosives.

You do have a lemon tree, so you might try running some lemon quarters through the disposer. However don't overdo it if you think there is a clogging problem.

When was the last time you snaked the line between the sink and the main sanitary?
 
smelly disposer

My ancient KitchenAid disposer never smelled. However, the replacement, made somewhere else but here, smells frequently. I finally "discovered" Disposer Care, which is packets of some kind of stuff that makes a lot of blue foam when used as directed. One simply runs the hot water for a minute, drops the entire packet (unopened) into the disposer after turning the hot water flow down to a pencil sized trickle, turns on the disposer and runs it until the foam disappears. Done! and the smell is gone. Found it in the detergent aisle of my grocery store, and costs approximately $1.00 per use. Maker suggests once a week, but I have found that once a month usually works for me.
 
Dishwasher powder (not tablets)

If you can get your hands on dishwasher powder or gel just dump a pretty large quantity of it into the sink (with the plug stopper in place).

Fill the sink with hot water (from tap (about 60ºC), not boiling water). If you use boiling water you will prevent enzyme action from occurring.

Using a spoon or spatula and ensuring that you do not splash make sure that the solution is well-stirred.

Then, wearing rubber gloves remove the stopper. I would suggest that you fit a chain or string to the stopper to make it possible to remove without dunking your hands into the sink.

Let that flow into the disposal unit and leave it for about 3 hours.

Re-fill the sink with hot water.

Remove the stopper-plug.

Then start the disposal and rinse through!

That should shift pretty much anything.

Dishwasher detergent is ideal because it will break-down fats and grease as it contains powerful detergents. It will also dissolve proteins and food matter in general using enzymes and it will kill bacteria off too.

If you think the disposal is still likely to be full of bacteria. Do a final rinse of it by filling your sink with a solution of liquid chlorine bleach and letting that flush through the disposal. Rinse it through after about 30 mins.

Before you do that, ensure that there are NO other chemicals in the sink though. Chlorine bleach if mixed with certain cleaning agents e.g. limescale remover and some drain unblockers can produce highly toxic chlorine gas which can damage your eyes, skin, lungs and airways.
 

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