How to Fit a Dishwasher Into Improvement Plans With Minimum of Grief

Of all the rooms in your home, your kitchen is probably the most space-hungry--and the most difficult to modify. Adding a major component to an already crowded kitchen may seem like an impossibility.

If you’ve wondered how you could squeeze a dishwasher into your kitchen, however, you might consider sacrificing a base cabinet. While this isn’t always an acceptable trade-off, in many cases it’s the only viable alternative.

Cabinet-for-dishwasher swaps won’t work in every home. Cabinets that were built in place or not built to standard dimensions pose too many problems. Another roadblock can be a cabinet that was nailed down or screwed down from the top before the plastic laminate was installed. In this case, removing a base cabinet for a dishwasher means you’ll have to look at a new counter top as well.

Luckily, the best cabinets for this switch are also the most commonly installed. These are factory-built, modular units screwed together through their stiles, which makes them easy to remove. They also come with corner brackets mounted on the inside walls of each unit near the top.

The counter top is screwed to the brackets from underneath, so it can be easily removed. If your kitchen has these mix-and-match cabinets, and you find a 24-inch base unit near the sink, you can install a standard dishwasher.

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Before beginning, double-check that the modular cabinet space will be adequate for a standard dishwasher. The cabinet space dimensions must be 24 inches wide, 24 inches deep and 34 1/2 inches high, measuring from the floor to the bottom of the counter-top edge band. (There are models also available that fit in an 18-inch-wide base cabinet space.)

Besides the dishwasher, you’ll need a 6-foot drain hose and two standard hose clamps. If your sink has a garbage disposal, you’ll need a dishwasher connector kit to link the dishwasher drain hose to the disposal.

Without a disposal, a dishwasher waste tee that is spliced in the sink drain pipe is required. In either case, the hose you buy must be heat- and detergent-resistant. You can find ready-made dishwasher drain hoses, but a five-eighths-inch automotive heater hose is a common alternative.

To bring water from the sink’s hot-water pipe to the dishwasher, you’ll need about 5 feet of three-eighths-inch O.D. soft copper tubing and a dishwasher “L”--a right-angle fitting with a five-eighths-inch male pipe thread on one side and a three-eighths-inch compression fitting on the other--to attach the tubing to the dishwasher.

You’ll also need a dual compression stop to replace the single compression stop that’s on the hot-water pipe connected to the faucet. A compression stop is a valve that controls the water supply to the faucet. Both hot and cold stops are usually found on the base cabinet floor, and they’re connected to the pipes with compression fittings.

Your electrical code will require a dedicated circuit for your new dishwasher, so don’t be tempted to pull the power from a nearby receptacle. In some cases, a dishwasher may share a circuit with a garbage disposal, but each appliance will need its own disconnect switch inside the base cabinet. Codes vary, so be sure to check.

To run power from a dedicated circuit, you’ll need a free slot on your service panel, a 15-amp circuit breaker and at least 6 feet of flexible metal conduit to house the wires. To carry the power, you’ll need enough 14/2 w/g cable (14-gauge, 2-wire cable with ground) to bring the power from the panel to the sink cabinet, plus insulated black, red and green wire to go from the sink cabinet to the dishwasher.

You can run insulated black, white and green wire standard conduit from the service panel to the sink. You’ll also need box connectors, a grounding clip, a single-pole switch and a surface-mount switch box with cover plate.