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vincejr_gw

Can I hook up a front loader to a kitchen faucet ?

vincejr
13 years ago

I know you can hook a top loader to a sink but can it be done to a front loader ? The front loader that I want to buy is a Amana 3.5 I was reading the manual on line and it says it need 20psi of water minimum.

I live in the US and dont have any washing machine connections in my apartment so can I use the kitchen sink faucet .

Comments (4)

  • hidroman
    13 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    That makes sense with a portable washer you always remove after having used it. IMHO it's a non sense with such a big frontloader you have to leave permanently in a place.

    Anyway you can use kitchen faucet **connections** to feed the washer. Open the sink cabinet door : you can see two copper (or stainless) pipes that exit from the wall and are routed towards the countertop.

    If you're into DIY it's a plain work to do, otherwise if you don't feel like to deal with it the plumber won't charge you that much for just a couple of stopcocks ....

    To have a clue look at this pic, it's a bathroom sink, but it is the very same thing

    {{gwi:2002784}}

    those *two* very parts where the *two* pipes exit the wall must be replaced with *two* of these :

    The upper part will be connected with the flexible pipe that is routed to the sink faucet, while the lower part with the 3/4" thread is where the hose has to be hooked. Obviously you need *two* of them : one for the cold water hose and another one for the hot water hose

    As for the drain usually sink siphons have a place (or even two) for the dishwasher/washer drain hose(s)

  • lee676
    13 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I'm facing the same issue. I recently bought a used Miele W1926 front-load washer that I obtained at a bargain price (see this thread for more on my new acquisition), but alas it's too big to fit where my old Haier mini top-loader (only holds 4.9 lbs., or 2.2kg) now resides. So I'm instead placing it in the kitchen area, the only other part of the apartment with plumbing. So I am grappling with how to best fill and drain the washer from and to the kitchen sink.

    For the old Haier in the bathroom, I've been using the sink-faucet adapter it was shipped with. These are inconvenient - they must be attached each time they are used, they don't allow use of the faucet when you're washing clothes, and it must be detached afterward. And they tend to leak a bit (albeit relatively harmlessly into the sink and down the drain, but still a waste of some water). I've seen similar adapters that ship with countertop dishwashers that have a red button you press to allow using the water tap when it's connected to the appliance, which would be more convenient.

    With the old Haier, there was only one water intake and you determined the wash/rinse temperature by where you set the sink faucet lever or knobs. It was best to set them to provide warm-to-hot water during the initial fill, then back off on the hot water and provide cool water for subsequent rinses - another inconvenience I could never get my flatmates to bother with. The Miele, however, thanks to its 240v power feed, is blessed with a powerful 2000W (2500W?) internal water heater, so you can safely set the faucet to full cold and the washer will quickly heat the water to the selected temperature. Miele doesn't allow capping off the hot water intake, but they do specifically allow attaching the washer to cold water exclusively if you provide a Y-adapter hose that feeds both cold and hot intakes with the cold water from the faucet. Thanks to the powerful 240v internal heater, this only slightly increases wash times, and it reduces the chances of certain stains setting by not dousing them with hot water immediately.

    So the first question is (a) should we use a faucet adapter and connect it when using the washer - easy to set up, but unattractive in use and requiring frequent attachment and removal of the intake hose, or (b) install a tee device under the sink and provide a semi-permanent hookup. Right now it has the common (in the U.S. anyway) hard copper tubing leading to a shutoff valve (which, amazingly, works) from which a flexible braided hose leads to the cold water knob of the sink faucet, similar to the one in this picture:

    I've never seen an all-in-one device like the one Hidroman pictured above, but I've certainly seen separate hammer arrestors and two-outlet tees, the former which would be placed before either the sink-faucet or washer outlet (and has been really necessary even with just the faucet - turning the knob off too fast causes hammering). The washer may be close enough to reach with the supplied hose; if not, I'll replace it with a longer burst-resistant braided one.

    The other half of the equation is draining the water. This was easy with the old Haier in the bathroom - just run the discharge hose into the shower. This would work with the Miele too, but it's no longer near the shower. It specifically supports discharge into a sink, but the typical U-shaped hose ends aren't large or stable enough to hold in place over a kitchen sink rather than the laundry tub they're made for (and bad as the occasional bathroom flooding was, I can't afford any flooding in the kitchen. I could probably modify the end of the discharge hose or cobble up something that would fit better, but it would be ugly and intrusive passing by a pantry door and up the base cabinets and always hugging the sink, helped only somewhat if I try to disguise it with a cabinet-panel raceway. Plus we'd always have to keep the kitchen sink clean.

    Right now, there isn't a food-waste disposer, and as it turns out I already own a working one I pulled out of a recent kitchen renovation job. It already has the "dishwasher" plug removed, but we don't have a dishwasher, and it seems I could discharge the clothes washer there in the same manner (kits to do so in the same location without a disposer are sold here) so the concept seems viable. And since the Miele has a coin/button trap and a lint filter, there shouldn't be anything unseemly clogging up the sink drainage plumbing. This approach would of course be almost invisible and imperceptible in normal use, and allow the sink, disposer, and washer to be used simultaneously if need be. The only issues here are (1) I need to install a disposer, (2) I need to run an electric line and switch to it, and (3) when I move to a new home I'll want to take the Miele with me, and can I safely plug up the "dishwasher" hole in the disposer so water doesn't leak out of the disposer into the cabinet, or must I remove the disposer altogether and either replace with a cheap new disposer without the plug removed yet, or remove the disposer and switch altogether and revert to not having a disposer?

    Thanks for anyone who's followed along!

  • hidroman
    13 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I can't understand WHY you need to install a disposer. Here disposers are almost rare and - expecially in UK - people have both washer and dishwasher drain hoses routed **to the syphon thing under the kitchen sink **

    To have a clue these are the syphon devices IKEA sells for their sinks Strainer - water-trap f sng bowl sink and Strainer - water-trap f dbl bowl sink

  • lee676
    13 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    That looks alot like the one I linked to....

    I don't *need* to install a disposer; it just happens I have one already and it has the additional port I need (i think); plus it would be convenient having one. Disposers by the way are very common in most parts of the U.S. (but inexplicably, prohibited by law in a few places, mostly the result of ancient laws still being on the books that date back to when old ones did a poor job and damaged septic tanks). In yet other areas, they're *required* by building codes. The U.S. can be strange about alot of things.

    Note that Ikea's U.S. site doesn't sell those double syphons. They're not very common in the U.S. Until recently, it was rare to have laundry machines in kitchens; it still isn't common. I've always liked them there though - makes it easy to wash a load or two whilst eating lunch or dinner unobtrusively. Here, many people devote hours a day, usually Sunday before work or school starts for the week, "doing the laundry" - running down two floors to the basement or cellar where the crude washer and dryer are usually found, carrying baskets of dirty laundry down, folding the clothes when they're clean, folding or hanging them neatly, and walking them back upstairs and putting them away.

    Laundry machines on the top floor of houses, where the bedrooms usually are, have become popular in recent years. That's where dirty laundry emanates, so it seems to make sense. But by the time you're upstairs, you're busy with other things. 10 to 20 years ago, and sometimes before then, it was popular to put laundry machines on the main floor, in a room off the kitchen, near the garage or carpark, but not in the kitchen itself. Since we're cursed with 120V/15A washers, and 1 of 3 homes don't have 220V outlets, combination washer-dryers are rare since they take forever to heat the water (if they do at all) and to dry the clothes afterward, working with 1000 watts.