My kitchen disposal is giving off this bad musty odor. And it's murder on my sinuses. Every time I go near that thing, my nose stuffs up. I know the odor is coming out of there, because if I cover the disposal, the odor goes away--but the moment I uncover it, the smell is there.
I cleaned the disposal but the smell remained. Even using full strength Clorox only kills the odor for a couple of days, after which the odor returns. There's some black gunk under the rim of the disposal. I scrub it off and bleach that area, but the gunk returns in 48 hours.
So now I'm wondering if there's decaying material either under the rotating plate of the disposal, or perhaps even deeper into the drain pipe, from which bugs keep growing. I tried Liquid-Plumr to dislodge any gunk in the drain, and the drain flows freely. But that didn't help the odor either. Or maybe there's bad stuff in the dishwasher drain hose that feeds into the disposal???
Any ideas?
Before I replace the disposal, I want to be sure the problem is there and not in the drain itself.