Rocketman Plumbing here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, offers fast repairs done right. We handle your residential and commercial HVAC and plumbing needs to keep your home or business running smoothly all year long. Today, we are covering dishwasher problems. If your dishwasher is working, you’re paying no attention to it. But when it’s not working correctly, something should be done.
What Is a Dishwasher Air Gap?
Almost all dishwashers have what’s called an air gap. This is a small cylinder that sits on your kitchen sink, and it connects the dishwasher to the kitchen sink drain. The air pressure it provides helps to keep dirty water from coming back up your drains. It forces the dirty dishwasher water up toward the air gap, and then from there it free falls usually into a garbage disposal or your drain underneath your kitchen sink.
Common Problems with Dishwashers
If you are noticing that when your dishwasher is draining, it is leaking water out of that air gap, there could be something wrong with the air gap. But more than likely, the hose from the air gap to either your garbage disposal or the drain underneath your sink is plugged up or semi-plugged up. It’s a big black hose about 2 inches in diameter. Sometimes, there gets to be a kink in that line and that restricts the flow of water out of it.
Another problem is if you run your dishwasher and open it up, but you notice it still has water in it. And sometimes it’s not clean water at all. If you start having a sewer backup problem with your kitchen sink, standing water in your dishwasher could be the first sign that your sewer line is backing up. This applies if you do not have an air gap and you just have a discharge line from the dishwasher to underneath the sink. If it starts backing up, sewage will run from there back into your dishwasher. And that doesn’t clean dishes very well at all! The cure for that would be to clean out the sewer lines, but also install the air gap that should be there.
Other than that, you could also have a water leak on the supply line going underneath your dishwasher. You’ll notice this if there’s water on your floor in front of your dishwasher or pooling up underneath your kitchen sink.
Call Rocketman for Expert Dishwasher Repairs
If you have any dishwasher problems, give Rocketman Plumbing a call at 505-375-6602 and we’ll come out and take care of it for you in a flash.