I have a garage disposal installed in my kitchen double sink. The pipe that comes out of the garbage disposal is horizontal to the main vertical pipe before it goes to the p trap. The t joint is baffled, and I am not a fan of this arrangement since it clogs quite often. (once in 6 months)
This causes a big problem for me since the dish waster is connected to the garbage disposal. How could I reconfigure this plumbing without the baffled t?
I would replace that hare-brained baffle T fitting with a 90° sweep tee fitting like this:
I could not find the right flavor online, but I have also seen 1.5 inch white plastic with hand tightening connectors.
Even a 45° wye would be better:
When I am doing a disposal install (non professional but at least 10 for friends and family) I do a double 90 right away and slope drain down a bit from there.
After doing the double 90s you don't need that much slope but given you will potentially have food items I would maybe go 1/2" down overall on your straight into the T.
Also BMitch is right. The AAV I think by code is supposed to be on the surface but that is another question.
Here's my solution to the ridiculous baffle-T that provides only a 3/4 inch or less route to drain a 1.5 inch pipe full of waste. The PVC parts cost about $20 at the local hardware store and provides a fill 1.5 inch route for the chopped foodstuffs to exit. Why can't some plastic plumbing manufacturer figure this out and manufacture a simple 1 piece fitting like this?
I know this is an old post but as a master plumber I would add a separate Santee for the disposal and arm over with its own trap.
By far the most common configuration is the baffle tee (possibly code required). I wonder if perhaps the disposal is not doing its job well enough? I do like the suggestion of a wye combo or adding the immediate elbow so that more water pressure goes toward the baffle (and run it with water when you use the disposal).
Some other suggestions I ran into were to have the disposal elbow feed the "top" of the baffle tee (opposite to how its typically setup). Wonder if you could combine it "in the middle" with a double wye somehow.
This page http://nettally.com/palmk/GDplumbing.html suggests basically "use two separate p traps" however some codes might disallow this: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2508839
The other common thought seems to be "well at least the drainage problem is located near the top so you can fix is easily" (instead of getting pushed down the line and stuck there) though that doesn't seem ideal still...guess this is an unsolved problem. The other idea thrown around is to remove the disposal altogether (not greatly practical), then you can use a regular sanitary tee instead of a baffled. I have 4 units with disposals and never had anything caught at that particular location, FWIW...plunging might help/work as well. Or maybe breaking that baffle piece in half? :)
