All of a sudden my garbage disposal will not turn on when activating the switch on the wall.

It started at a low noise, but the mechanism inside the sink would not rotate. Then the next day when you flip the switch to turn it on.....nothing. No sounds, nothing.

What's going on?

CAR96 said:

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All of a sudden my garbage disposal will not turn on when activating the switch on the wall.

It started at a low noise, but the mechanism inside the sink would not rotate. Then the next day when you flip the switch to turn it on.....nothing. No sounds, nothing.

What's going on?

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Check for a red reset botton on the bottom of the disposal and push it and see what happens!

yep, red button on bottom.

If it is making that "low noise" then that means it is stuck.

Flip the switch off, get your allen wrenches, on the bottom, center, find the right size and just turn back and forth a few times.

Red button didn't do it.

What am I adjusting with Allen wrenches?

Something is stuck in the mechanism and you are trying to work it loose by turning it back and forth.

Ok. Where do I attach the wrenches. I couldn't see anything underneath the disposal to attach a wrench.

Never mind, I just saw where on a photo on the Internet.

Probably too late, but you can stick a broom handle down into the disposal and use it to turn the blades a couple times. If the red button and this don't work, it might be the end of the line for it.

I got it working. Adjusting from the bottom and the red reset button did it.

Wish I knew about this red button and wrench thing. Our disposal stopped working(wouldn't power on), said screw it, and replaced myself. Wasn't expensive or difficult. Thing was 10 years old, might have been time.

chipotle said:

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Wish I knew about this red button and wrench thing. Our disposal stopped working(wouldn't power on), said screw it, and replaced myself. Wasn't expensive or difficult. Thing was 10 years old, might have been time.

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Every new disposal that I've seen comes with an angled wrench like the one below. It doesn't adjust anything, it's just used to rotate the motor and blades to free them up when jammed. I would bet your new disposal came with one.



There were multiple times in days gone by that I reset the red button and then freed up the motor/blades with the wrench. Then had to remove the drain line and clean out the potato peelings or the like that my wife or one of our daughters had put in there causing the jam.

Yeah, but I'm sure a lot of times those wrenches get thrown out as folks typically have no clue what they're for...

I used a 1/4" allen wrench, worked great.

Wrenchette.

Gary79Ag said:

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Yeah, but I'm sure a lot of times those wrenches get thrown out as folks typically have no clue what they're for...

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Yep, I'm pretty sure that's the case.

HumbleAg said:

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There were multiple times in days gone by that I reset the red button and then freed up the motor/blades with the wrench. Then had to remove the drain line and clean out the potato peelings or the like that my wife or one of our daughters had put in there causing the jam.

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I'll see your potato peelings and raise you a shot glass. Twice. There's a screen on the sink drain now.