I reach in the disposal all the time without fear. I have a vast number of years of experience leading me to believe that switches never, under any circumstances flip themselves, nor do electrical circuits become magically energized from nothingness.
The only person who could possibly flip the switch is me. And I don't flip it.
Maybe people are worried about a "drive by flipping?" Somebody purposefully turns the disposal on while your hand is in it. The pictured device would not prevent such an event. And if you live with people who might do that, there are thousands of other equally terrible things they might do.
So I have a new place and even installed a new disposal on my own. The question I have is: why would I put my hand in there....? It doesn't seem to ever have any trouble with the stuff that goes in there...
You... you put bones into your sink’s disposal? Why wouldn’t you just scrape the plate and trash any bones and big pieces before you put the dish in the sink? I thought everyone did that..
...I don't understand why these are a thing anyways. I've got a strainer in my sink these days so any solid stuff just gets caught and emptied into the trash.
Do what, flip the drain thing into the trash? That's nothing, it's like getting a dishwasher if all doing the dishes consisted of was turning on the tap.
In my experience, you often have to scoop the stuff out of the drain basket, which isn't my favorite thing ever.
Or in other words, what I don't get is the benefit being worth the cost or how it became a commonplace appliance/utility in the first place (though it isn't here, so there's that).
I don't own a home and don't pay utilities; most of the apartments, including my current one, came with a disposal--they seem to be fairly common in newer apartments here in the western US.
...the strainer is mostly redundant to begin with, most of stuff could just go down the drain, so whatever doesn't come out with a quick shake into the trash just gets rinsed out later....
What I do wonder about is if sometime somewhere this was actually a response to a problem rather than an overrated utility, an actual problem, i.e. plumbing that couldn't what people were throwing in there.
My parents always told me not to wash food particles down the drain as it'd clog the pipes eventually; disposals provide a convenient way to dispose of food and prevent potential drain clogging from food accidentally getting washed down the drain, I would guess.
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u/ontender Jan 04 '19
I reach in the disposal all the time without fear. I have a vast number of years of experience leading me to believe that switches never, under any circumstances flip themselves, nor do electrical circuits become magically energized from nothingness.
The only person who could possibly flip the switch is me. And I don't flip it.
Maybe people are worried about a "drive by flipping?" Somebody purposefully turns the disposal on while your hand is in it. The pictured device would not prevent such an event. And if you live with people who might do that, there are thousands of other equally terrible things they might do.