Kitchen Large Electric Appliances - Dishes never come out clean from dishwasher.

Our dishes never seem to come out clean from the dishwasher. Most of the time dishes come out dirtier then they went in. Who ever installed the dishwasher did not utilize an air gap, the out take hose is positioned way at the top of the dishwasher right underneath the counter, less than an inch of space between the hose and counter top, right now believe it or not the hose is straight across to the drain so there is no way to arc the hose to prevent backwash. Are we going to have to totally pull out the dishwasher to fix this problem?

You should be able to make necessary add ons with the dishwasher where it is. Do you have the 4th deck hole in the top of your kitchen sink? If so, install an airgap and buy that 1 1/2 inch pvc Y tailpiece to go above the trap, that the hose section that comes from the airgap plugs into.

Another way of gapping the dishwasher is to replumb the pvc so you have a standpipe under the kitchen sink. Then you just poke the discharge hose down into the 1 1/2 inch pvc standpipe as you would a washing machine discharge hose into a standpipe. The top of the standpipe would be high up under the sink. I have done both designs I speak of....copied after master plumbers jobs.

If your current discharge hose is short for any of these projects, you could buy more hose and one of those barbed couplers and stick it in two ends of hose with band clamps and extend what needs be.

I don't understand how your hose can be up near the countertop and yet straight across to the drain. I am sure your drain is not at countertop height. The drain from the dishwasher is at the bottom of the unit. The proper way to run the hose is at the highest point of the adjacent cabinet and then down to the drain. This is considering not having an Air Gap. Your problem is more likely that the screen in the bottom (inside) of the DW is filled with debris and food. It just keeps getting thrown back on the dishes. I have never seen a "standpipe" under a sink. All the places I have worked, this would violate code. Good luck.

majakdragon,

How could a standpipe airgap system be against code when even commercial bars utilize this method of draining? If laundry facilities that are not even in concrete floor basements, but are in the living quarters of homes can even have this...why not the dishwasher? This was done in condo units, built off blueprints, and where licensed plumbers did the work, as opposed to do-it-yourselfers.

Just curious.

DaVeboy
Perhaps your idea of a "standpipe" is different. Bars use a trapped drainline in the floor (basic floordrain) for the ice holding sinks and a regular drainline for the waste water (trapped and vented). I agree that there is an "air-gap" between the line and drain for the ice sinks. Laundry facilities (no matter where they are) have a standpipe that is a trapped pipe that is also vented. Where or WHY, would you put a standpipe under a sink that has both a trap and a vent? The sink drain already has both.

DaVeboy, Where or WHY, would you put a standpipe under a sink that has both a trap and a vent? The sink drain already has both.

Precisely that is why you WOULD. Since the standpipe would have a trap and it's on a vented line (perhaps behind the sink wall only 2 feet away), you would automaticly create the required air-gap. And it is doubtful you'd have any more problem with a dishwasher, by utilizing this system, than say an upstairs washer discharge whose discharge in speed and volume would exceed that of the dishwasher.

Such a system also would probably never have required service calls such as the sink-top airgap that has a baffle in it and another in the Y-pipe...two problem spots, with the smaller diameter piping and tubing, as opposaed to the 1 1/2 inch standpipe.

Odors due to trap drying out? Possible. But then so could the toilet, sinks, or more commonly laundry/water heater closet floor drains.

I'm mentioning some of these things to cover the bases of what could be wrong swith such a system, and I fail to see any real problem. Perhaps they did this because the big box store ran out of 4-hole sinks. I don't know. All I know is that was done by licensed plumbers.

Back to the original posters question. Dishwashers have been installed for many years before air-gaps were ever heard of. Only reason they came into existance was because lazy installers did not run the line up and over the cabinet and then down to the drainline. This caused the dishwasher to suck water out of the drain. I still maintain that the air-gap and drain are not to blame for the dirty dishes. One way to prove this is to disconnect the DW drainline and run it to a container. Then run the DW and see if the dishes are still dirty. All an extra drain/stand-pipe is going to do is clutter up the area under the sink. Basically, what I am saying is that the homeowner could drill a hole through the wall and run the DW drainwater into the back yard (legally) and his dishes would still be dirty.

Could very well be. I never even addressed the dirty dishes issue; only the drain piping as from the OP it sounded unconventional from a new construction standpoint.

A dishwasher I just worked on 3 days ago had the same complaint. The tenant actually said the same thing that the dishes seem to be coming out dirtier! Turns out her dishwasher is not fully filing with water; only partially. And it never made it up to the screen that recirculates the water. I checked the sump screens/intake and float and these were okay. I ran the dishwasher when in the once-fill first wash cycle and opened the door and observed. The sprayer arm's water would not reach the upper rack! THEN, I filled the machine once...then advanced it all the way around to the befinnign again so it fil with water again some more, twice...then advanced it yet again, thrice... to allow the solenoid valve to let in water 3 times in a row, and THEN I opened the door as it ran and wow...I got soaked and the water was spraying so hard up to the ceiling of the diswasher you'd think it was under 100 psi!

So...the water volume was the issue. I did not have time to tear into it, as the lady will get by for now, till I come back, by turning her timer around in circles to get it to fill with water 3 times before she allows the dishwasher to continure to run on it's own. Now we know at least the dishes will be clean. I will come back and disconnect her line from the solenoid valve and make sure line presure is sufficient. Then make sure a screen might not be plugged. And if it's not either of these...probably replace the solenoid fill valve (or solenoids if sold separately). But I'm not doing THAT until I receive factory specs on timer fill time. I was told to go to Maytag's website and I can contact their customer service and techs there about getting that spec.