Garbage Disposal Repair & Replacement · Highland, CA

Garbage disposals are one of those appliances nobody thinks about until the sink is full of water and the switch just makes a humming noise. Then it's a full-on kitchen crisis. The good news is that most disposal problems in Highland aren't the kind that need a new unit. About half the calls we run for garbage disposal repair in Highland end up being a jam, a tripped breaker, or a bad connection at the switch, none of which require replacing the disposal at all.

The classic mistake is flipping the switch over and over when the unit is humming. That hum means power is getting to the motor but the flywheel is stuck. Every second you hold that switch, you're overheating the windings. On the bottom of every Insinkerator and most Waste King models, there's a small hex slot. A quarter-inch allen key in that slot lets you manually turn the flywheel and pop the jam free. Then hit the red reset button on the bottom, and 9 times out of 10, you're back in business.

The other thing folks in the Inland Empire underestimate is horsepower. A 1/3 HP disposal was fine in a 1980s Highland tract home cooking hot dogs and canned corn. It is not fine in a modern kitchen where somebody's cooking real meals, running fibrous vegetables and citrus peels through it. Our hard water, right around 17 grains per gallon, also builds scale on the grind ring, which makes an underpowered disposal jam even faster. If you're already replacing yours, spend the extra $80 for a 3/4 or 1 HP unit. You'll get double the life out of it.

A homeowner in East Highlands Ranch had us out last month for a "broken" disposal that was actually a leaking sink flange. The plumber's putty around the top of the disposal had dried out and cracked over about 12 years, and water was running down the outside of the unit and pooling in the cabinet. She thought the whole thing was shot. Twenty minutes of resealing the flange later, no more leak. Total cost was less than dinner for two.

One thing worth knowing: California code requires an air gap on the dishwasher drain that ties into your disposal. If yours doesn't have one, it should. Bad backflow into the dishwasher is one of those hidden problems nobody thinks about until they're washing dishes in dirty water. When we replace a disposal, we check that setup every time and fix it if it's wrong.