Home Improvement Product Reviews

Glad I Bought It, March 21, 2011

I’m copying and pasting the review I used at Home Depot, because that is where I bought this compactor. However, I spent a lot of time on this review, and I love buying stuff on Amazon too, so I decided to also put my review here. The exact model I have is the black 15″ Elite model, but I’m sure this review applies to just about any of their 15″ elite models.

My unit arrived slightly defective. The hold feature doesn’t work. So far, I’ve had a repair guy out three times, and he still has a part on order to try to fix it. Fortunately, the compactor works in normal mode, so this hasn’t prevented me from using it. (One other switch broke within the first week, but the repair man was able to fix this on his second visit. So it was only out of commission for about a week.)

The good news is that Broan has been very nice and helpful, and has paid for all of the service visits. So, you can have confidence in their 1-year warranty, and if you get unlucky like me at least you don’t have to pay for repairs. With any luck, yours will simply work right out of the box!

Because of these warranty issues I’ve had to deal with, I can’t give this a 5-star review. If it arrived in perfect working order, I would have been happy to give it 5-stars.

But I can still confidently give it 4-stars. I love this compactor. I’ll list the positives, and then address some of the negatives I’ve read about it in other reviews:

Positives:

Excellent horse power. This unit crushes glass bottles with ease. In fact, it is so powerful that I decided to stop crushing my glass to a pulp. Now, I use the first glass bottle “popping” as the sign that my trash is full, and I take it out to the can. By doing so, this has been a great indication of when it has compacted enough for my tastes. (I haven’t even come close to overworking this thing).

It looks stylish. I love the black color, and it matches the rest of my appliances. As a free standing unit, it looks great and gets the job done.

Excellent capacity. We can fit three days worth of garbage in this thing, including gallon milk jugs, formula containers, etc. (I have two very small kids. We were going through a full kitchen sized bag every day.) I was having trouble fitting all of the trash small kids can generate in a week (diapers, formula containers, milk containers, etc. etc.) in the single curbside receptacle. Now it is very easy. Two of these bags per week is about our new average. That is amazing. I think we are getting about a 4:1 compression ratio, which I think is great.

Addressing some unfounded criticism:

This unit, freestanding, does indeed tip forward. BUT, once you install the inexpensive front kick plate (), this problem goes away. The user manual makes it painfully clear that for a freestanding installation you MUST use this kick plate. This trash compactor has been rock solid ever since I installed that kick plate. I can’t get it to tip forward very easily even when I push down on it. Yes, it was very annoying to have to order a second part that I feel should have come with the unit, but I’m not going to knock off any stars over it. Now that I’ve added this item, I’m over any annoyance I had from needing to place a second order. (I did actually order this kick plate from Amazon, as it turns out.)

Trash bags are expensive. Yes, they are. BUT, the generic compactor bags that are sold at Wal-Mart work just fine, if you stretch them just a bit. Oh sure, the company warns you against doing so, but seriously, it is a plastic bag. For about a quarter of the cost, I’m happy to make do with an off-brand bag. Their official bags are great, and easy to use. I just wish they were more affordable. However, the workaround is so easy, I can’t really consider this a legitimate downside. I’ve even considered using Glad Forceflex bags, which I’m sure would work.

Not enough compacting power? One review said that stepping on trash would work just as well. This isn’t true at all. I certainly can’t crush wine bottles just by stepping on them, but this trash compactor laughs at glass bottles. I have to empty the trash as soon as I hear glass breaking, or the compactor would turn them back into the sand from which they came. PLENTY of horsepower. It was very difficult for me to fit all of our garbage into one trash can every week, but now it is easy. (And before I had this unit, I was OF COURSE standing on the trash can smashing it down with my body weight. No way I could do as good of a job, not to mention how silly I looked.)

Legitimate complaints: It really isn’t as convenient to throw stuff away as with a normal kitchen trash can. You have to open the door, pull out the drawer, and make sure your kids aren’t going to tackle you when you are bent over. (Happened to me once, I scraped my arm.) Also, there is no way I want my kids throwing stuff away in here…

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My first trash compactor – works!, May 24, 2011

By 

Brian Wilson (Palo Alto, CA) – See all my reviews

  

I’ve always wanted to try a trash compactor, and now I have one (arrived today). I set it up “stand alone” (not embedded in a cabinet) which means I got the “toe-kick” called “Broan-Nutone 15TCTK Free standing Toe Kick Kit for 15″ models” which keeps it from tipping over frontwards when the drawer is open. Other than the toe-kick, it comes ready to be “stand alone”. It took about 10 minutes to figure out how to unpack the trash compactor and install the toe kick (two bolts) just because I was being careful.

We have it here in our office where we produce a lot of “office trash” like styrofoam food containers and waste paper. We have fed it the contents of 10 of our little office trashcans, and so far it isn’t “full” (have not had to empty it yet). If I remember I’ll sign back in after a while and update after a month or two of experience with it. But if you don’t hear back, it probably hasn’t broken.

The trash compactor itself is very heavy, but after lugging it into the final position it is fairly good looking as a stand alone unit (we put it at the end of a long counter by the sink). I’m slightly surprised that the bucket isn’t made from any heavier type of metal, but as long as it doesn’t break I’ll be happy.

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Buy a More Efficient Compactor, January 12, 2012

I have owned a 12″ Broan 1050 trash compactor for five years at my previous home and loved it, which is why I decided to stick with the Brand. Unfortunately, I am dissppointed in this new version after being spoiled by earlier models.

The quality of the materials used and the compacting mechanism in the smaller 12″ compactor model is far superior than the updated 15″ model. The 15″ stainless door looks great in the cabinets and appears to have the capacity for a weeks plus of garbage. However, once you open the door you will realize only the bottom half is used to place the garbage. The compacting mechanism in this model does not compact as well as the older 1050 model. We used to only take out garbage once a week on garbage night and now find ourselves taking out garbage twice a week (we have not added more garbage).

Somehow Broan designed this model to be wider which takes up more real estate in my kitchen while reducing the quality of the crush.

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