Disposals and dispensers

This shelf held food-waste disposals and hot-water dispensers. They share a sink cabinet and little else.

Disposals

Horsepower on the box is a rough size label. The grind chamber, the jam reverse, and whether the unit is continuous-feed or batch-feed change daily use more than a tenth of a horsepower. A batch-feed lid is the switch. A continuous-feed unit uses a wall switch and will run with the hole open. The red reset button is on the bottom of the motor. A humming motor with no spin is usually a jam, and the hex socket under the chamber is there for an Allen key.

A new disposal arrives with a knockout plug in the dishwasher nipple. Leave it in if no dishwasher drains there. Knock it out if one does, or the dishwasher cannot empty. Houses on a septic tank often skip a disposal because the extra solids land in the tank.

Dispensers

A hot-water dispenser is a small tank under the sink and a second faucet. It needs its own hole in the sink deck or a combined faucet. The tank is electrical and it sits in a wet cabinet, so the outlet should be a GFCI and the supply line should have its own shutoff.