Home › Garbage Disposal Installation & Repair › Miami Shores
A waste disposer that will not start is not one fault, it is a short list of them, and only one item on that list is a dead motor. Complete silence when the switch is thrown nearly always means the machine is not being given any current, and there are four places for that to be true: the thermal cut-out underneath, which latches out after an overload and has to be pushed home again; the switch on the wall; the receptacle at the back of the cabinet; and the breaker. A noise of any kind changes the diagnosis entirely, because noise proves the supply is intact. In the older houses along this stretch of Biscayne Boulevard and through the Village, the supply is exactly where the fault tends to live — many of these kitchens have plaster-and-lath walls, original wiring and joinery that predates the appliance by half a century. So Gold Hands tests before recommending. Should the motor prove genuinely finished, everything then depends on the box in the hall: how strong it is, how much room it needs from top to bottom, and whether it will sit on the collar that is already up there or arrive with a mounting system of its own, in which case the sink-rim fitting is driven out, the bowl cleaned back and a fresh one bedded in putty. Hanging a machine on services that are already present, plus the collar, the sink-rim fitting and the waste as far as the bend, sits on our side of the line. Gold Hands carries neither a plumbing nor an electrical licence. A run that is dead back at the board, a control or outlet that has to be created, any change to where the waste goes — that is referred to a licensed contractor and written down as theirs.
Three observations tell us more than any description of the noise, so gather them before you get in touch. First, what the switch produces: silence, or something. Second, whether the board shows anything out of line, or whether the kitchen lost something else at that instant. Third, whether the button on the base of the housing sits level or stands proud, and whether pushing it bought you anything. Send those to (786) 788-8714 and we can usually tell you over a text whether this is a control fault, a machine at the end of its life, or work that belongs to an electrician. Morningside, Belle Meade, Bayside and Shorecrest on the Upper East Side, El Portal in the middle and the Village at the top — all of it is ours, and these calls are taken in English, Spanish or Russian.
A good share of the messages we get say the customer has already bought the unit and simply wants it hung. That works, and we will fit one you supplied. What we ask is to see it before the old one is unbolted, because two facts about it govern the length of the job. Brand decides the mount: a like-for-like maker generally hangs on the ring already fixed to the sink, whereas a change of brand usually means a different mounting system and the flange has to come out of the sink and go back in with new plumber's putty. Capacity decides the fit: more horsepower means a deeper chamber and a taller machine, and the cabinets in this part of the county rarely have inches to spare. Neither finding is bad news. Being told after the old one is down and the kitchen is out of action is.
Call (786) 788-8714 · Get a free quote
Every job gets a free written estimate with the scope, prep and materials named — not a vague day rate. Gold Hands Miami is insured. Work that legally requires a licensed trade is referred to a licensed pro.
Original joinery and plaster: the cabinet problem in Miami Shores
In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s houses of Morningside, Belle Meade and Bayside, and in many of the postwar homes on the Village's tree-shaded streets, the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink is not a modern carcase. It is built-in joinery, frequently original, occasionally with a fixed back and a face frame that leaves a narrower hole than the doors imply. That single fact changes the job. Whatever is going in has to get through that hole before it can be raised into position, and a machine that would slip easily into a modern carcase can be impossible to work into one built eighty years ago. Both the hole and the headroom above the bend get measured, and we would far rather tell you the model in your hallway is the wrong shape than force it and split something.
Plaster-and-lath is the other feature of these houses that reaches this job, and it does so through the switch. Where a disposer was added to a kitchen built long before disposers were common, the control was fitted wherever a cable could reasonably be run, which in a lath wall often meant surface trunking, an adjacent cabinet, or nothing at all — the unit is simply plugged in and switched at the socket. None of those arrangements is necessarily a fault, but they all fail differently, and they all look like a dead appliance from where the homeowner is standing. Our technician finds out which one you have before touching the machine.
Three jurisdictions in one Miami Shores ZIP code
The 33138 area is unusual in that it runs through more than one local authority: the Upper East Side neighbourhoods sit within the City of Miami, the Village has its own municipal identity, and El Portal lies between them. For an appliance exchange under a sink this makes no practical difference, and we say that plainly because homeowners here often expect it to. Swapping a unit onto services that already exist is maintenance, not construction.
Where it does start to matter is at the edge of our work. Should the finding be a run that has to be pulled, an outlet where none has ever existed, or a change to the waste behind the carcase, you are into licensed territory and, depending on the address, a permit from whichever authority your street answers to. We do not guess at that boundary or step over it quietly. The technician tells you which side of it you are on, puts it in the written estimate, and the hand-off happens before anything is dismantled rather than after.
Dated plumbing behind a Miami Shores cabinet
Houses of this age have usually had their plumbing worked on several times, and the section under a kitchen sink is where the layers show. Open a cupboard here and it is entirely ordinary to find a new bend married onto an old branch, a dishwasher hose spliced in during the 1990s, and a sink-rim fitting that has outlasted two owners. That matters to a disposer job in one specific way: a machine held up by a corroded ring on a flange set in putty that went hard decades ago rarely comes off cleanly, and the quote should reflect the flange coming out rather than pretending it will lift away.
It also matters to the diagnosis. A good proportion of the calls that begin as a broken disposer end with the appliance exonerated. Water appearing on the cabinet floor comes just as easily from the trap joint, the dishwasher branch or the flange gasket as from the unit itself, and a slow drain in a house with an older waste line is usually the line. Replacing a working motor to cure any of those is a waste, and a technician who says so is worth more than one who does not. When the pipe rather than the machine turns out to be at fault, a licensed plumber takes it and we make the introduction.
Neighborhoods and ZIP codes we cover in Miami Shores
Garbage Disposal Installation & Repair in Miami Shores — questions we get asked
What will this cost in Miami Shores, and how do you arrive at a quote?
This page carries no figure deliberately, because the same enquiry can mean a switch, an exchange or a full flange re-bed. Nothing is charged for the written figure, and it follows the findings: machine or supply, collar kept or renewed, whether the sink-rim fitting will release without damage, how much headroom sits over the waste arm, and whether any of it is work we are not entitled to carry out. Three pictures — the badge, the open cupboard, the control — answer most of that before an appointment is made.
Who ends up in my Miami Shores kitchen, and where do the things under the sink go?
One of ours, named to you in advance of the appointment. The cupboard is cleared onto a cloth first, because there is water inside the machine and more of it in the bend, and everything is stacked back as it was. Where the floors and joinery are original the machine is taken on a block or a knee the instant the collar is slackened, because a collar surrenders in one movement and what it drops costs more to repair than it does to buy. If the job turns out to belong to an electrician, you are told there and then and not billed for an unfinished machine.
My Miami Shores home is a condo along the Biscayne corridor. Are there building rules to clear?
In the smaller apartment buildings along that stretch there usually are, and they are straightforward once they are started: a certificate of insurance held by the management office, a note of when the contractor will be in the building, and sometimes set working hours. The changeover happens inside your own kitchen, past your own isolating valve, so nothing communal is involved. The one exception is an isolating valve that has stopped closing, because the water then has to be killed upstream, and that is the building's schedule rather than anything we control.
The unit is decades old. Is it worth repairing at all in Miami Shores?
Age alone does not decide it; behaviour does. Run it after pushing the reset home, or with a doubtful control taken out of circuit for a test: if it turns happily, the machine is sound, the fault is elsewhere and nothing has to be bought. If it hums but will not turn, the fault is mechanical and is a separate conversation. If it is silent with proven voltage at its terminals, the winding is gone. Growling bearings, or a spindle you can move sideways in its housing, mean it is finished whatever else is done. Those are the real thresholds, and we apply them before making a recommendation rather than after.
I rent a house in Miami Shores. What has to happen before you can replace anything?
The owner has to agree in writing, because the machine is bolted to their bowl and this is not a change that can be undone — one appliance comes off and a different one takes its place. Send the owner our written diagnosis; it makes the decision easy, and most owners prefer a trade doing the work to a tenant attempting it. Anything reaching the run, the outlet or the control is the owner's electrician by law as much as by preference, and whatever comes off the sink is left at the property so they can see what their money replaced.
Summer downpours put water everywhere here. Is a soggy cabinet in Miami Shores a disposal problem?
Often it is not, and that is worth checking before you replace anything. These are older houses under mature landscaping, and heavy rain finds its way in through blocked gutters, a wet exterior wall or a soaked crawl area long before it comes from an appliance. Damp that shows up after rain and dries out before the next shower is hardly ever the machine. Damp that only shows up while the sink is running, clean or greasy according to which joint is weeping, generally is: the sink-rim gasket, the bend, or the dishwasher branch. Telling us which pattern you are seeing points the visit in the right direction immediately.
My disposal just hums but doesn't spin — do I need a new one?
Not always. A hum with no spin usually means the flywheel is jammed. We free it with an Allen wrench through the bottom reset hole and test it before recommending a replacement.
Do you supply the disposal unit?
You can buy your own model, or we can pick one up at cost. We will size the horsepower to your household's typical use if you want a recommendation.
Other work we do in Miami Shores
- Ceiling Fan Installation & Repair in Miami Shores
- Door Repair & Installation in Miami Shores
- Drywall Repair in Miami Shores
- Faucet Installation & Repair in Miami Shores
- Furniture Assembly in Miami Shores
- Light Fixture Installation in Miami Shores
- Interior & Exterior Painting in Miami Shores
- Picture & Mirror Hanging in Miami Shores
- Shelf Installation in Miami Shores
- Toilet Installation & Repair in Miami Shores
- TV Mounting in Miami Shores
Need garbage disposal installation & repair in Miami Shores?
Send photographs of the job to (786) 788-8714 and a written quote comes back naming the scope and the materials. The quote costs nothing, and nothing reaches the invoice that was not on it.