Modern homeowners use a lot of different appliances and devices in order to make their homes as convenient as possible. When it comes to your plumbing system, the garbage disposal is one of those appliances that can make the biggest difference. While perhaps not as integral to your life as a water heater, the luxury of a garbage disposal can make your daily routines a lot less of a hassle. 
Like any mechanical system, of course, the garbage disposal can run into some operational problems. These units are designed to be workhorses, and they are relatively simply in terms of design and construction, so they tend to be quite reliable. Taking a few extra precautions with your use and care of your garbage disposal in Southington, CT will help you to get the most dependable performance that it has to offer.
How Does a Garbage Disposal Work?
Before we discuss how to protect your garbage disposal by using it properly, we want to make sure that you understand how it is that a garbage disposal actually works. Common as garbage disposals are in homes throughout the country, there is a lot of misinformation around when it comes to their actual operation.
Primarily, we are talking about the belief that there are blades in a garbage disposal that must be kept sharp. You've probably heard that tossing some ice cubes down the drain will help to do so. Well, there are no blades in a garbage disposal, so you don't have to worry about keeping them sharp!
Garbage disposals are not blenders. What they do is grind up food into very small particles. They use impellers to do so, which work along with the centrifugal force created by the spinning of the mechanism in order to force food against a stationary grinding plate. The water running through the unit then flushes this fine material down the drain.
Keeping Your Garbage Disposal in Great Working Condition
Every now and then your garbage disposal may fail to start up, or it may shut down abruptly. In most cases, simply pressing in the reset button on the unit will fix the problem. You can avoid overloading your garbage disposal or causing other operational issues by being careful with how you use it.
- Keep very fibrous foods out of the garbage disposal. Save them for the compost bucket. Corn husks, celery stalks, artichoke leaves, and other such materials may seem harmless. Just because they aren't hard doesn't mean that the disposal can handle them, though. These items can get wrapped up in the disposal and cause it to overheat.
- Hard foods, such as fruit pits and uncooked bones, should also be kept out of the garbage disposal. You don't want to damage the mechanism by putting items into it that cannot be ground up successfully.
- Fats, oil, and grease, collectively known as FOG, should also be kept out of the disposal. While these materials are liquids when hot, they will congeal when they cool down and can cause blockages. There is nothing that your garbage disposal can do to avoid this.
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