Hi fellow DIYers,
Today we took matters into our own hands, as I often do, and installed the garbage disposal in the new sink!
DIY Garbage Disposal Install
One of the things that I don’t like waiting for is others when it’s something I can do myself. We recently had the counters replaced in our kitchen and that was a bit of a mess because neither the counter guy nor our plumber family told us that we would need to have someone help us hook it all back up. It makes sense if you think about it but they didn’t tell us which was annoying! We went without water for most of one day because it was dripping and we wanted them to help us hook it up. Thankfully FaceTime came in handy and he helped us over the phone. Now we’ve been without a working kitchen sink for nearly a week. Not good in our house where we make our own meals all the time!
I said screw it and went out and got the supplies myself, I can’t wait and we need to wash dishes and stuff. Doing all meal prep in a bathroom sink sucks lol. One of the things I wasn’t too sure about was if there were different kinds of garbage disposal connectors. This one didn’t seem like it came off! I thankfully watched a helpful YouTube video that explained there is a ring that comes off. Now it makes sense!
Once I figured out that the ring came off it was a lot easier to get this thing sorted out and installed.
What you have to do is get the correct plumbers putty. They make ones for stone sinks like marble and others and they make ones for stainless steel sinks. I didn’t know that my first go-round lol. I got the stone putty but went out and got the right stuff after.
What you do with the putty is put it around the top inner rim of the garbage disposal that connects to the sink when you place it down into the hole. This prevents water from leaking out the sides. When you put it around the rim of the disposal, you then push it down so that it’s flush with the sink and clean off the excess putty that spills out to the sides. I had to do this twice, when I pushed it down and later when I was finished installing the disposal. Not too bad but just something to be aware of. The other thing I made sure to do so that it looks professional is to align the words here with the faucet so that it’s pointing straight. Might not be a big deal but it will make it look good.
Now that the top is taken care of we need to install the lower parts and get it secured.
This wasn’t very easy since installing that ring that holds the disposal clip when you are underneath isn’t very easy lol. It was tricky to get it to stay! Thankfully it only took two minutes or so to get it to work.
So now that the disposal was roughly installed it was time to trim the old pipe. The sink we have now is a significant amount lower than what it was before so it’s great but just requires adjusting of the things like the pipes and stuff. Thankfully the drain pipe itself didn’t need to be moved, just the one for the disposal. I put the disposal on and lined up the drain outlet off that to where it needs to go for the drain pipe. I then made a mark of where it would roughly be the lowest on the pipe. That gives me the amount of pipe I need to cut to make it fit.
Now that it was cut, it’s time to move onto the next step: gluing!
If you’ve ever worked with PVC stuff before, this glue smells awful! It’s not as bad as some things for sure but it’s definitely a strong smell. What you have to do to get it to seal properly is to use the primer then the cement. Thankfully they sell small packs of each for DIY folks like myself who don’t need huge amounts of it.
Funny enough, this was taken by the little man! We don’t let him use phones or devices since it’s bad for them (just look up all the major tech company and rich peoples lifestyles, their kids don’t get devices at all! Wonder why?) but he will watch us like a hawk. He decided to ask me for my phone since I was taking pictures of what I was doing, and he snapped one for me! Definitely going to have our own little DIY business going when he gets older lol. Sounds like fun! I was opening the jar of glue here to put it on the pipe so we can get rolling.
Now that the glue was all opened, what you have to do is put the primer on the outside of the pipe around the perimeter in a liberal quantity, we want it to stick you know! After that do the inside rim of the connector so that when they meet it will be a solid seal. Do the same with the glue and be fairly quick about it since it does set quickly. A good idea is to set it into place but not fully down. Push down and twist in one direction so that not only does it connect the glue but it also spreads it out sideways and provides a much better seal and connection. Learned that trick from my dad!
Ideally I would have cleaned off the excess stuff from the pipe but I did this right before bed which wasn’t a good idea. The little man was tired so I had to skip the clean part. Oh well, good thing Siena likes the color purple lol.
Now that it’s all taken care of, it’s time to hang the garbage disposal! Thankfully this was straight forward now that everything lined up correctly. You have to insert the drain from the garbage disposal into the drain pipe to make sure the waters going to travel the way we want. I sealed up the connector and moved onto the final tightening.
I didn’t have the original wrench they give you but this one will suffice. All you really have to do is use the wrench to give you leverage to turn the disposal in the tightening direction of a screw. There are grooves on the side of the mount that will let you do this. This guarantees that the disposal won’t fall off, they do vibrate a considerable amount! Don’t want to have it fall off lol.
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