Need help to un-plug Garbage disposal !! (drain, sink, cleaning, plumbing)

[councillor]

Made a mistake and put too many potato peels in it and now it's stopped up.

The plunger has worked in the past but doesn't this time, am I going to have to remove the disposal and tear it apart to fix this issue or what?

Any help appreciated.

[gregm]

They usually come with a allen wrench to put into the allen head socket on the bottom so you can turn it by hand.

No wrench? Go to the closest Big Box store and buy one.

[councillor]

It run's fine, it's just stopped up. It's like it's gargling ...

[K'ledgeBldr]

Undo the trap; clean it out. Then take a bucket or can and put it under the outlet pipe on the disposal. Then quickly turn on and off the disposal to "burp" it clean. Run a little water, and burp it again. Button it all back up then run alot of water and turn on the disposal- it should be clear, or will clear.

You don't have to take the disposal apart, or disconnect it from the sink.

[reed303]

If it's not jammed, just plugged, then a possibility is the pipes and/or P-trap under the sink is clogged. If so, you will need to undo the pipes and clear the clog.

[wit-nit]

My wife inadvertently clogged up ours awhile back with a ton of cabbage that she dumped in. It stopped up in the P pipe and backed up in the sink so I put a large pail underneath the P pipe disconnected it and voila' a ton of crap came flying out. I poured some water into the sink to flush out the rest of the connection, then reassembled the P pipe and ran some hot water through the system.
15 minutes of time is all it took and it was all cleared.

[HWTechGuy]

As others have said, most likely the drain piping beyond the disposal is plugged. That is what I had to deal with recently because neither my wife or her mother listen to anything I say and keep doing the wrong things in terms of using the disposal.

[Ohiogirl81]

The moral of this story: Don't overload the disposal! Be mindful of what you're stuffing in there.

I rarely use mine, just for stuff that inadvertently escapes the screen. Everything goes into the compost pile.

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

We hardly ever use ours anymore. Just dump the pealings in the trash. Here is the deal though with disposals. Don't ever load them up and turn them on. A disposal should be turned on and then slowly place items in it, especially items like pealings of any kind. Disposals not only cut up the waste, they also shoot it out into the drain. If you pre load it then you will be shooting uncut items into the drain causing it to plug up. When I was in high school and a year after high school, I worked for a drain cleaning service. One of our most productive calls and plenty of them, were to clear out disposals around the holiday season. People like to not only stuff themselves, but also the disposal.

[Chimuelojones]

like everybody has said the clog most likely is in the drain from the disposal to the p trap.

Undo the plumbing under the sink and check that the pipes are clear before tearing into the disposal.