Another Home Repair Achievement Unlocked

My late afternoon quiet today was shattered by a report from the kitchen that the insinkerator was leaking.

Verily it had crapped out, developed a crack in its casing, stopped working, given up the ghost, was busy making a mess, and had gone to meet its maker. It was a dead insinkerator indeed.

So now I had the joys of working with both plumbing and electricity at the same time.
I ran out to Lowes and bought a replacement unit - this time 1/2 HP rather than the 1/3 HP of the dead unit, as more power is better and for $15 more why not?

First, I turned off the circuit breaker marked disposer and then tested to make sure it was the right one. It was and it was on to the next steps.

Then it was removal time.

I disconnected the pipes and the dishwasher water tube.

Then I was able to get the unit off its sink mount with some allen keys for leverage and it was electricity time.  I opened the access panel and undid the electrical connectors.

Then I cleaned the piping, put on the new gasket and flange, wired in the new unit making sure the new connections were tight and mounted it under the sink.  Be sure to pop out the dishwasher drain plug if you plan to hook it up to the dishwasher as it is hard to see that it was in there blocking that outlet and is quite easily overlooked, which can lead to some bad results.

Once everything was lined up and the drain hose and tube were tightened, I re-tightened down the mount to the new unit with an Allen key for leverage and voila, a new insinkerator was in place.  Testing revealed no leaks, putting the circuit breaker back on led to no popping, and it ran fine and quieter than the original.

The whole thing only took 38 minutes from the time I turned off the circuit breaker and only expanded my vocabulary by a moderate amount.

It's a relatively easy replacement process.