Tie in laundry drain - you make the call.

I've got plently to keep me busy these days, so I thought I'd hire out the plumbing for a laundry/mud room addition. So I get three plumbers, all recommended, with three different ways of tying in the clothes washer drain. Not surprising I suppose. In order of low to high bid:

1) Tie laundry drain into a 2-inch horizontal drain, downstream of a kitchen sink and dishwasher; upstream of where the bath group connects to the main 3-inch horizontal. Seemed like a bad idea to me, but he countered that it would be unlikely that all three fixtures would be in use at once.

2) Tie laundry into 3-inch horizontal downstream of bath group. This would require about 20 feet of 2-inch. That should work...

3) Change 2-inch horizontal to 3-inch; tie 2-inch laundry drain in downstream of kitchen and upstream of bath group. Seems the best solution to me as I could go ahead and have him rough in for a sink in the laundry room as well.

I'm curious as to which way the plumbers on this board would do it.

Thanks,

With out seeing your plumbing no body can really tell you what would be right or wrong.
The best advise I can give is make sure the plumbers are licensed. Reading what you have for a set up and seeing it is two different things

I would go with #2 or, #3...
What are these guys doing for a vent?

# 3 is what I would do. #1 won't pass code up in my neck of the woods.

I agree that reading it and seeing it can be two different things. You can rest assured that when I decide which guy to go with I'll be making a call down to the plumbing inspector to make sure he's licensed... and that he won't be using square pipe.

Redwood said:

What are these guys doing for a vent?

Click to expand...

On that they all agree - the 2" vent for the kitchen sink just happens to be in the same wall, so they'll tie into it in the attic.

drain

Your description of #1 is incomplete, but if it is the way you state it, any of the three methods will work. The costs for each should increase in the same order you have listed them.

Thanks for all the responses. After I made my initial post, I realized I left out that the house is on a crawl space, distance to the main, pipe fall, etc. If you've got the time, I'm curious - what information would be required to make description No. 1 complete?

Again, thanks to everyone.

drain

The upstream of the main bathroom connection. What does that mean? If the 2" drain only connects from the kitchen sink, (the dishwasher is irrelevent), then it is adequate for the washing machine, AND a laundry sink.

Thanks for getting back with me. Let's see if I can describe this better.

The house currently has two horizontal branch lines connecting to the 3-inch building drain. The first is a 2-inch line that connects the kitchen sink and dishwasher. This is the line that plumber one wants to connect the laundry to.

The second horizontal branch is a three-inch line that connects a lav, a water closet, and a tub with shower. This branch connects about 5-feet downstream of the first branch.

I had no idea the dishwasher was irrelevent. And I lived in a house once where the toilet gurggled every time the laundry drained, so I had some concerns that don't seem to apply here.

Thanks for the schooling.

drain

Should be no problem regardless of which of the three methods you use. A toilet gurgling could be caused by many things, but most of them would have to do with the drain venting.