Frigidaire Dishwasher Installation

Today was a good day to install a new dishwasher. Good thing too, because our new one showed up this morning. I would say this has been a long time coming and almost didn’t happen. Luckily, while we were in the kitchen place in December, we made the decision to get one. I think it was the right choice. The strangest thing is now I feel like I’m living in my mother’s house. The kitchen feels so “legitimate.” I mean, we are so used to washing dishes by hand…I guess I just feel spoiled, that’s all. Even the sound of the dishwasher feels like when I was growing up. You know the feeling…having a conversation while wiping down the counter tops at night, listening to the hum of the dishwasher. It’s weird.

Ok, so here are some photos of the installation. I would first like to say thank you to Rob and Paul who both offered to come over and help install this beast. It needed to be wired and plumbed, but when I found out how easy everything easy to do myself, I just couldn’t help it. Onto the pictures…

This is the Frigidaire dishwasher we got. It is a no frills model. We got it for $230, which was the cheapest one in the store. I asked the sales guy what the difference was between this one and the others and he told me basically features and sound dampening. I told him we would take this one. I don’t need the thing to scratch my back, I need it to clean the dishes.

This is the hot water feed that comes from under the sink right next door. This fitting came with the dishwasher installation kit I bought from Home Depot.

This is the rest of the kit (braided hose) after it is all together. Sorry for the blurriness.

This clear hose is the drain hose that goes up and over the dishwasher and then attached to my drain hose I bought last week. I clamped the two together with a fitting.

This is the wiring I ran from the breaker box, under the house and up through the floor in back of the dishwasher. The wires just attach to the two wires that come with the dishwasher. The ground gets screwed right to the dishwasher. The wiring is attached to a 20AMP circuit breaker in the box. It’s very simple.

Here is a nice view of underneath the dishwasher, if anyone cares.

This is the fitting I got the other day. I talk about it in this post.

This is the almost finished product. All I have to do now is to put the base plate back on and peel the protective film off the black door. We already ran two loads in this bad boy and are very pleased. For a dishwasher with virtually no sound insulation, it’s fairly quiet. It doesn’t use much water at all and does a great job cleaning the dishes and silverware.

New Dishwasher Plumbing

Ever since I went out this past Saturday and purchased a new dishwasher, I have been preparing for its delivery and installation. The appliance store will be doing the delivery and I will be doing the installation.

Setting everything up is actually pretty fun. This post is about the plumbing part of it. Here are a few photos to get things kicked off. It’s simpler than one might think…

The first thing I did was to drill two holes in under the sink in the wall facing the dishwasher. In this photo, you see four holes. That’s because I drilled the two upper holes first. Then, I thought for a little while. I figured that I had no idea what the back of this new dishwasher was going to look like and how tight the fit was going to be. Those two first holes may be too high and go right into the side of the dishwasher “tub.” I then thought that it would be a better idea to drill two holes in the floor of the sink cabinet and then out the side down below. I know the tub part sits up a few inches, so this should clear everything. For now, these two hoses don’t go to anything, since the dishwasher isn’t here yet, but just in case you were curious, the fat hose is the drain hose and the braided one is the hot water feed.

This next picture is of the drain hose hooked up to the sink drain. This was pretty simple to install. Lowe’s and Home Depot sell these pieces of pipe with the drain spout sticking out. All I did was to remove the existing pipe and trim the new one to length. Then, I popped it in and hooked up the hose with a hose clamp. On the inside of the pipe is sort of a “shield” so the water will only go in one direction. Pretty nifty.

This is a photo of the hot water feed that is currently connected and the new braided hose with the “T” connector. Lowe’s and Home Depot sell these connectors especially made for this. I am going to connect the white hot water hose in the back to the top part of this T. That will also give that white hose some slack.

That’s about it for the plumbing part of the dishwasher preparation. All that’s left is the electrical and the actual dishwasher installation. I will share when they are finished.