Our contractor feels it's better to snake the dishwasher drain all the way back around the L to the sink drain. This would mean drilling holes through every cabinet along the way, and an 8 foot dishwasher drain hose. When I mentioned how it was handled next door, the contractor disagreed.

What are your opinions? Where would you drain the dishwasher, through the floor to a basement bathroom drain pipe, or snaked around the cabinets back to the kitchen sink?
I hope my description of the issue was clear. Let me know if you need more info.
Thanks in advance for any ideas and advice!

drilling holes is easy.
but is unnecessary.

you can send the hose under the cabinets.
it starts out at floor level when it leaves the DW.
from there you don't need to send it high.

high loop it at the sink cabinet or the one before it.

go to http://www.terrylove.com/forums/index.php ,
where real life practical people will confirm all this.
among them are Master Plumbers with decades of experience.

they will tell you more
the advantages of a smooth hose.
the problems that arise when a drain goes down one floor.

Code is there for a reason.
the problems they will describe are not guaranteed to happen; they are maybe going to happen.

hth

Going behind the cabinets is the correct way to go. The holes being drilled will be next to the wall & should only be thru each end partition on each cabinet. You will never see them and they do no harm in being there. Running the hose low will trap water in the line which may stink if not used regularly. Running the hose high and sloping to the drain tailpiece will keep the line drained as much as possible.

Take Care,

Dan

It's also good to spell out clearly for newbies that no DW hose needs to be "drained as much as possible".

It's also good to spell out clearly for newbies not to fear "water in the line which may stink if not used regularly" --- and besides, all DW hoses have water in them at all times. So I tend to think there may not be much knowledge behind that post. The word "tailpiece" is another clue: it's the wrong term, as the tailpiece is the first piece of horizontal pipe downstream of the P trap (part of the P trap), and that is absolutely not where the DW connection is made. DWs are connected above the P trap. Hope this helps.

Fear not.
Whether your hose goes high early in the line, halfway, or at the end.
Eight feet length of hose is a medium long hose.
Ten and twelve feet length have been seen before. That is long.

Call the DW manufacturer if you want their advice about this question.
"How long can the hose be before it goes high?"
"Is it better to loop high at the end or right away at the DW?"
Different DW manufacturers give different answers.

There may ultimately be determined in this forum a "correct way to go" but I wouldn't wait for any group consensus or decision on anything called correctness. In any case, as mentioned above, holes are easy to cut, will not be seen and will not interfere with anything. There is space for the hose. It does no harm being there. You can choose the route it shall take.

h.t.h.

For someone to throw around the term "Newbie" soo much, you think you would know a thing or two. In the first paragraph you state "water...not trapped in anyway" and in the paragraph state "Standing water is always there". Thank you for confirming my point.

You talked about using "Automotive Radiator hose" which is much larger than the heater hose I think you were thinking about. Your experienced plumbers would have to use a lot of duct tape to make that one work. And yes it's duct not "duck" tape.

To fill you in, the tailpiece is located between the basket strainer and the p-trap which would be upstream, not downstream from the p-trap. Anyone who knows anything about plumbing knows the dishwasher fitting slides onto the tailpiece (or threaded to the basket strainer) and is exactly where code requires you drain the dishwasher.If you are connecting the DW drain downstream from the P-trap, thats an untrapped fixture.

And thank you for soliciting your WEBSITE and not answering cyberhomegardeners question. If you want to expand your website you can google "plumbing 101" for a start.

Thanks for the laugh!

Dan

:P

About trapping water:
There is always standing water in the hose so it's the opposite of a problem.

Dan,
To say: "running the hose low will trap water in the line" implies it's a problem.
To say: "which may stink" implies it's a problem AGain!
To say: "keep the line drained as much as possible" implies the drain should be drained, and that is not the case.

One could say: "to maintain a smaller amount of standing water" to describe the real situation you were suggesting. Which is a fine situation.

DWs drain through an 'indirect waste' into a trap for protection.

The small amount of water in a trap that is used regularly rarely becomes an odor issue.

It is more likely the trap will dry out and allow sewer gas into the house and THAT crates an odor issue.

The waste water from the DW contains food and other organic matter, and if the hose is long and pitched incorrectly can easily develop odor issues.

The DW itself can start to smell if water runs back into it from a long or incorrectly pitched hose.