Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I'm here with some fun stuff we had to do with our garbage disposal!

DIY Garbage Disposal Install

The other day I had my wife tell me that there was water everywhere under the sink. I was thinking well shit, that's not good and normal! Let's hope it's not the dishwasher. Thankfully it wasn't the dishwasher! It ended up being the garbage disposal.

The garbage disposal, for those that don't have them, are these electric devices that grind up food scraps in the sink and make it so you can put things down the drain instead of throwing them in the trash or compost bins. I think it's a pretty helpful thing to have in the kitchen but I know a lot of people don't like them for one reason or another. When it leaks though, it's not good!

What I looked up was the various reasons that a garbage disposal will leak. There are a few places it can leak of course but the worst one is when it leaks out of the bottom of the unit, which is where ours was leaking. This means that the internal seals are worn out and the unit has to be replaced. It wasn't that bad since the unit was about 8 years old, so we definitely got enough use out of it!

What happened here is the water would leak out of the available exits which ended up being the screws or reset switch. Some water stuck to the device too and we could see some corrosion on the different parts of the bottom. Time to go!

Now that I had the unit down, one of the things I made sure to do was figure out how the thing was wired! I'm not an electrician but it's not too difficult to replicate when you have an example to go off of. Pretty basic, white with white, black with black and put the grounding wire with the grounding screw. Got it!

What I also like to do and find critical is to make sure that you match up the units! You don't want to have something that's a different size so it's always best to put them side by side to ensure that everything looks similar. There may be small changes but overall it should look nearly the same. They were both the same size and height so I knew I was good to go.

Now the next part was to figure out how to get the wire clamp secured onto the unit. This one was a little tricky since I didn't know what to do the first time lol. I put the wire in the clamp and tried to insert it but that was a fruitless endeavor. Thankfully I didn't spend 20 minutes doing it that way, only about 30 seconds before I realized that wasn't right.

Putting the clamp on it first then securing the clamp was the right way to do it lol

Once the clamp is on there then it's time to secure it from underneath with the nut. This one was a little tricky since it didn't give you a lot of room. You hand tighten it but then need to give it a few pokes down with a flathead screwdriver to really secure it. Got 'er done though!

Wires in and clamp secured!

Once I got the clamps on there I put the wires in and went to figure out what I needed to do to get it wired up. These jerks with the new cord wanted to make it difficult of course. They didn't give me the common white and black wires, both were black, damn! I could feel a difference in them though, one of them was ridged and the other one was smooth. I don't remember enough from working with my dad years ago what each represented so I had to look it up. The ridged wires are the neutral and the smooth ones are the feed or hot wire. (I think! @dandays, Hive's resident electrician, will have to correct me on that one! I know I did it correct when I wired it but that was weeks ago since publishing this post so I may have forgotten since then lol)

Now that the wires were in there, it's time to twist 'em together. I don't know if there's an elegant way to do it with these, I know with solid wire it's pretty good and easy to do that but with these thin and separated wires, it's hard because they fall apart if you do it too rough. I made due though with using my fingers to give it a good twist.

One thing I did which is just good habit (I think....) but didn't take a picture of it necessarily, is putting the ground wire on first. Got it secured then I moved onto the neutral and feed but it's not dangerous for me since this was all entirely unplugged and without electricity. Got those wirenuts hooked up and tucked them in as nicely as a newborn baby to bed.

Last thing I had to do was pop out the dishwasher plug! I'm glad that I gave the unit a look over before just plugging it in and throwing it on. The dishwasher plug was firmly secured there and wouldn't come off unless you punch it out with a screw driver and a hammer. Noted for future reference lol.

Got the unit back up, complete with ample plumbers putty! Thankfully I had the clip already attached to the sink. Putting the clip up and having everything work correctly was a little difficult when we got the new sink installed. It took me easily about 15 minutes to get the O-ring on there properly lol

Thankfully proud to report that the unit seems to not have caught fire yet LOL I was a little nervous about doing it but with some good research, you can do almost anything you give a try!

During the process I had my handy dandy helper, our son! It was fun to do this with him, he enjoyed it for sure!

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