Okay, five years into home ownership, I start to notice a stink under the sink. The Badger is cracked, and I don't know for how long. ruined sink base, not sure about the floor below it. Crack is in the vicinity of the dishwasher return pipe, directly above the outlet pipe. pretty good split, wish I could share the photo. I don't know if I put something down there that caused this, but I'm going all-metal on the next one. Just for the record, the case is plastic.

I will not buy this brand again. Looks like there are MUCH better, longer-lasting options out there for a little more money. Looking to replace with this:Waste King L-8000 Legend Series 1 HP Continuous Feed Operation Waste Disposer.

I bought a new house in 12/04, the badger-1 came with the house. Worked fine for five years, I live alone and eat out most of the time so I rarely used it. However, I made guacamole one night as I had done several times before and put the peels in the disposal. The next morning I noticed a strange sound when running the disposal, so I looked inside the rubber seal and saw that the peels were gone but the interior was rusted. I then looked under the sink and was horrified to find that it had been leaking for who knows how long, with black mold everywhere. I will never buy another insinkerator product.After looking at reviews on Amazon, the Waste King Legend 8000 seems to be the way to go, with a lifetime in-home service warranty, averaging 4.7 out of 5 stars, and only fifty-two dollars more than the incredibly poor-performing badger.

I have bought Two of these units in ten years. Cracks in the upper housing seems to be a common problem.

This unit was installed in the condo my boyfriend bought, and worked OK for the first little while, but after about 2 years of light use it stopped working (totally dead; tried all the suggested fixes, many times, no luck reviving it), and about the same time we noticed a growing crack in the black plastic body of the disposal, where a small leak had developed (thankfully that seemed to happen about when we stopped using it, so we didn't have any issues with the floor of the cabinet rotting or having mold develop like others have).

I just replaced a 1/3 HP Badger that lasted for a good 9-10 years with no real problems. The only real thing to mention would be the noise level. I replaced the Badger with a 1HP Insinkerator Evolution Excel - it is much quieter - hard to even compare - can barely tell that it is running. Both are good products - time will tell as to how long the Excel lasts - it comes with a 7 year warranty - if it runs the 9+ yrs that the Badger ran, I'll be pretty satisfied....