The garbage disposal is one of the most beneficial investments you would make for your home. It makes cleaning up your kitchen so easy and works excellently well in helping you get rid of most of the food waste from your household on an everyday basis. However, there ought to be times when you dread having the machine: like when you accidentally drop your ring into the garbage disposal!
Can A Ring Go Through A Garbage Disposal?
A ring cannot go through a garbage disposal. The holes on the walls of the garbage disposals are too tiny for a ring to pass through. What will happen is that your disposal will get jammed, or you will continue to hear a loud clanking sound once the ring falls into it.
When you hear that “clank, clank, clank!” sound, your heart immediately sinks and you start to panic. Well, let us put your panic to rest by saying that your ring that just fell into the garbage disposal is indeed retrievable.
Safety Tips
Before you do anything, you need to stop panicking, because your state of mind can lead to making mistakes that can worsen the situation. There is every chance that your ring is closer to retrieval than having gone deep down the disposal system, and even a small mistake from your end can end up making the retrieval close to impossible.
Risk of Electric Shock
Since your instant reaction to losing your ring inside the garbage disposal is likely to be to stick your hand inside to search for the same, without thinking about switching off the disposal and taking the plug out, you risk getting an electric shock. This risk is higher if your garbage disposal system is old and you have not maintained it properly.
Risk of Injury
When your ring falls into the garbage disposal, your first instinct would be to stick your hand down the drain to try and recover it. STOP! The blades of the garbage disposal are designed to be extremely sharp, to grind up all the waste disposed of in it. So, if you stick your hand inside the drain, you will injure yourself, even if the disposal is switched off. Those sharp blades will puncture your skin, and can go even deeper if your hand gets wedged inside, causing more serious injuries, thus sending you straight to the ER.
How to Retrieve a Dropped Ring from the Garbage Disposal
Turn off the garbage disposal
The very first thing to do if a ring falls into the sinkhole is to turn off your garbage disposal immediately. Keeping the disposal powered on can cause its motor to burn out as well as damage its grinding components.
Shut Off the Water
As soon as you realize that you have dropped your ring into the garbage disposal, shut off the water. When it falls into the unit, it is most likely to get stuck in the P-trap (the U-shaped pipe you see underneath your sink). Since the P-trap is designed to trap a small amount of water, leaving the water on can push the ring further down the drain, which means the chances of retrieval can get minimal.
Use a Magnet
Since your ring has some metal in it, using a simple magnet trick can help you recover it from the disposal. (Pure gold, silver, and platinum rings are not magnetic). To do so, make a telescoping magnet by sticking or tying a piece of a magnet at the end of a long stick or rod. Slowly and carefully lower the magnet into the drain and pull it back up slowly. If the ring gets stuck to the magnet, and you pull it too fast, you risk dropping the ring back inside.
Use a Pick Up Stick
If you happen to have a four-pronged grabber/reacher tool or pick-up stick, you can use it to try and reach the ring inside the drain. The length of the tool will allow you to reach farther down the drain than the magnet stick discussed above. Use a flashlight to locate the dropped ring and use the claws to grab it.
Given below is a video about retrieving a ring that fell into a garbage disposal;
Reset and turn on the garbage disposal
once the ring is safely removed and you ensured that nothing is left inside the garbage disposal you can turn it on to see if it is working properly. but before turning it on, you will most likely have to press the reset button on it. So, locate the reset button and if it is pushed out, push it in, and then start the garbage disposal. Here is a detailed guide to locating the reset button on any garbage disposal, and also feel free to read how to reset a garbage disposal.
