A couple nights ago I had arrived home from Taekwondo class and noticed while still in the garage that my wife had texted me the following ominous words:
The garbage disposal appears to be broken.
It is clogged. The food is going nowhere. It’s baaaaad.
That’s the perfect thing you want to read when you’re about to walk into your house.
So I walk in and glance in the sink. Sure enough it was a quarter full of soapy water and tiny food parts. My wife had attempted to do…something…with a bit of Dawn, but succeeded in only frothing up the water and making a nice soap batter. Not only that but I couldn’t help but notice a toilet plunger afloat in the froth. They weren’t horrible ideas necessarily, but the soap made seeing into the disposal impossible.
I began troubleshooting the problem and decided to test the motor.
Dumb idea #1.
The motor spun up fine…and instantly ejected a good portion of the sink’s contents into my face. Boy, isn’t this evening going swell?
So the disposal was working properly. It sounded good and was running fine. That was a big relief, since it told me there wasn’t anything preventing the motor from spinning. The problem seemed to be in the pipes, which could be anywhere from not-too-bad if it was under the cabinet to oh-crap-life-sucks-bad if it was buried in the ground on the way to the septic tank somewhere.
I looked online to see if there were any suggestions and found one somewhere that suggested pouring ice into the disposal and grinding the cubes up to dislodge whatever was blocking the pipe. I got the ice bucket from the fridge and dumped the half the ice into the sink.
Dumb idea #2.
The sink was full of sudsy water and food pieces. Ice splashes. Dad gets covered (again) in soapy water and food. I was so…happy!
With measured patience, I used my dirty hand to turn the disposal on and crush the ice. This time, however, I wisely used the toilet plunger to semi-block the wild torrent of froth from soaking me any further.
The ice was quickly ground to a pulp and I basically succeeded in increasing the level of the water in the sink.
I looked under the sink and started feeling around the pipes. In hindsight I have no idea why. It seemed logical at the time…and in fact it did yield one key piece of information. The drain pipe coming out of the disposal was cold, but the trap and plumbing beyond was not. Hmmm…this means that the ice is not getting into the trap, which must mean the clog is in the trap.
I cleaned out the cabinet of all pans and cutting boards. Now it was time to remove the trap. Thankfully I thought ahead enough to grab a bucket, hoping that when I removed the trap the sink above would drain. I placed the bucket under the trap, removed the couplings…and a loud woosh sound came out as all that water came into the bucket. Not really a dumb idea per se, since there was really no non-messy way to do it, but regardless I still ended up with food parts and water all over me. This time, it was my shins that bore the brunt of it because i was squatting down. Also, I’m not entirely sure, but I’d estimate that only about 20% actually ended up in the bucket based on how much was in the cabinet afterward.
The good news was that there was nothing clogged in the disposal itself. The sink was now empty (well there was still some froth and of course the plunger) so the disposal was good. The bad part was that there was food in the pipe heading into the floor and the trap was absolutely FULL of…well, rice.
You may be asking yourself, “Now why would your drain trap be full of rice?” If you’re not, you should be, because I sure was. However, to get to the ‘why’ you must first have some back story.
A few hours earlier, my daughter had decided to cook some…you guessed it…rice. She’s getting better at baking and cooking and is always looking to expand her recipe list. Rice is pretty straightforward and is pretty much her favorite food, so what better thing to cook than that? The wife gave her the recipe and rice and she began. She measured out the rice carefully and put it aside. Then she measured out the water and put it in the pan. She got the salt and butter and had it ready.
Then she put the rice in the cold water. Before boiling it.
As I said, she’s still learning and somehow neglected to actually read the directions, instead going straight for the ingredients list. My wife, when she discovered this, just took the pan of rice and…
Yep. Poured it all down the disposal.
Dry rice.
Into a drain pipe.
With a trap perpetually full of water.
Ain’t science fun?
-
- Drain pipe full of rice
Oh sure, she turned on the disposal and ran the water to wash them away, but the pieces were so small they disappeared quickly so she didn’t run the water long. Hence, the rice wasn’t pushed past the trap. Presumably it just settled in there and a little into the pipe beyond, and since that sink must not have been used for a while the rice just sat there and soaked up all the water. A cup of rice makes many servings of cooked rice so the poor trap never stood a chance. As you can see in the picture above, it was completely clogged. The next time they tried to use it, there was nowhere for anything to go, so it came back out. Onto her.
And, an hour or so later, onto me. Plumbing dadventure? Check.
Epilogue – the rice was excellent. No, not the drain pipe rice – that was disgusting! I mean my daughter’s second batch. Turned out great!
