What to Do if Garbage Disposal Leaking

Video Transcript

"Michael Raines. Expert Village. Well, our disposal is in, the electrical is hooked back up, the power's on, and our drains are back on. So, let's put back our switch and fire it up, see if it works. As you remember, we had to take apart this little guy. That's going to go on here, centered real nice. Put our screws back in real nice and neat. So, we've actually fixed a disposal. We've actually learned how to remove a disposal, how to service a disposal, how to check our switches, how to check the breaker, and how to check the electrical hookup on the disposal itself. And how to change the splash guard. That's pretty important. Because you know every time you see somebody's disposal, the splash guard is broken. Because it is that much trouble to replace. And we did it. Alright, so there's our switch. Is it going to work? That is a working disposal. Now most people think that "Oh my God, you can't run your disposal without water, you're going to break it!" Well, you know what, that's an old wives' tale. You can run your disposal. In fact, I'm going to let it run. You can't break your disposal running it without water. You're not supposed to use your disposal with food without running water, but you can your disposal without water. It won't hurt it. It's an electric motor. It's insulated from the water anyway. The only reason you need water is to wash down whatever it grinds up. So you can let it run and run and run, it doesn't matter. You're not going to hurt it. So give up that old wive's tale. You can let your disposal run without water as long as you don't put any food in it. So now, we're going to turn it off. Disposal's fixed. We've checked the wiring, we've checked the switch, we checked the connections on the disposal, we've replaced the gasket. What's next? Got to see if we have any leaks. So let's turn on some water and see if we've got any lakes. Okay, let's look under here. Hey, no leaks! Nope. And you can feel the hot water in the sink, in the drain. Nope, no leaks."