The drain hose from my Kenmore dishwasher leading to my Kenmore garbage disposal is getting pretty clogged. Plus the material in the hose is starting to decompose. (The hose is translucent so I can see it in there). And there is an odor coming from it that is really bothering my allergies.
I would like to try to unclog it, but I've never done it before.
Once I unscrew and loosen that metal clamp that holds the drain hose onto the garbage disposal, how do I physically remove the drain hose from the disposal? Does it just pull right off, or do I have to twist it off? Or is there some other connector that I have to unscrew? (The only connector I can see with a flashlight is that metal clamp around the drain nose.)
I figured I could stick an unbent straightened coat hanger into the hose and just try to dislodge the clogs. Is there a better way?
And most importantly: Once I unclog the hose, how do I get the hose back onto the garbage disposal in such a way that it won't leak after I put the clamp back on?
Get a box of TSP in the paint department of your local big-box store. Use it instead of dish washing detergent and run the empty dishwasher a couple of times. The gunk should be all gone. Be sure water is hot!
There is a good chance that if you go to sears.com and then navigate to their service,support, parts area you can look up your model dishwasher. Once you find it there is almost always an exploded view of it showing all the parts. You might be able to tell on that picture how the drain hose connects. I'm guessing it uses a simply wire clamp to keep it tight. I don't think you can just "pull it off" without using pliers to loosen the clamp and move it down off the nipple first.
The ones I've seen are made of wire - think of the old heater hose clamps on cars, thick spring wire. I was differentiating between the screw on type he indicated he saw on the disposal end with what I think he'd see on the water pump end.
Pliers are the correct tool to use on what I referred to as "wire clamps". But no, for the other clamp, on the disposal end, which he obviously has seen, it would take a screwdriver or nutdrivdrer.
Google "wire clamp". Just because it's made of wire doesn't make it a "wire clamp", especially since there really is something specifically known as a "wire clamp". Whether it's the screw on type or this type, it's still a hose clamp.
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Keep in mind that the OP admitted to being a newbie, so we should make sure we keep the terms we use accurate.
That's interesting! Do you think a monthly dose of TSP will help keep pipe s clear? I just blew a bundle on kitchen and bathroom sink plumbers. They talked about "maintenance". Guess I was just stupid, thinking that if I d idn't put fat, etc. down the kitchen sink & rarely used disposal, everythin g would be fine. Hah!
Now I do want to do regular maintenance, so asking if you recommend monthly TSP. If not, other suggestion?
There should only be the single hose clamps. Can you get a camera in there so we can se for sure what we're dealing with?
The hose should be "pressed fit" on which means that it's not exactly loose enough to fall right off but it should come off with a small amount of twisting. The longer it's been on, the harder it usually is to remove the hose. Also, be careful with the amount of force you use because over time the plastic fitting (I assume) the hose attaches to may have become brittle. The trick to successful home repair is to keep from making things worse by trying to fix them. (-;
Compressed air (be sure to cover the drain with wet rags) sometimes works if you have an air compressor. A bottle brush or a dowel would pose less of a puncture threat than a coat hanger and provide a wide cross-section area to push out the clogs. I bought a very small snake (flexible coiled wire) from Harbor Freight that works very well with such hoses. I'll look up the part if you think you might try that method. It can maneuver around twists and turns in the hose and is probably a much better choice than a dowel or any of the other stuff.
I would only remove one end of the hose - the one with the screw-on clamp and then see if I could clear it without disturbing the other end, especially if it has a different kind of clamp. That may well be the case if the manufacturer installed the hose, and not a plumber. Manufacturers use clips that can be installed by speedily by machine and they are trickier to remove and replace successfully by humans. If there's no screw on the second clip, leave it alone until you have no choice but to remove it.
If it was snug enough that it didn't just fall off in your hands, you don't need to do anything special to put it back on other than making sure the hose clamp is snug. You may find it's so snug that you need to apply a little dishwashing detergent to the inside of the hose to help it slide onto the mating pipe nipple.
All that said, you can't go wrong listening to Mr. Drahn (really?) and trying the TSP route first.
Do you have a filter in your dishwasher that might be missing?
Of course, I was going to loosen the clamp, slide it down the hose, before trying to disconnect the hose. I was just wondering if then the hose would just twist off the disposal or if there was some other "gotcha" I didn't know about.
So you loosen the clamp, slide it out of the way and then the hose comes off by pulling and twisting it back and forth. Given that you said the hose is showing signs of deteriorating, I wouldn't waste time cleaning it, just replace it. The other end may be accessible by removing the cover panel at the bottom of the front of the dishwasher. Hopefully it doesn't require pulling the dishwasher out.
The hose should be routed so that between the disposal and the dishwasher it comes up high, to the bottom of the counter top. Either that or some will have an airgap in between. Either is there to help prevent waste water from getting into the dishwasher.
I'm sorry it's blurred; my camera insisted on focusing on the background instead.
No, the problem is that its drain hose dips down way below the height of the disposal. As a result, whenever I pour water into my kitchen sink, it (and any debris in the sink) goes BACKWARDS into my dishwasher!
Many times, I have found waste water and debris in my dishwasher even though I didn't run it. It came from my kitchen sink.
The chemical called tri sodium phosphate, the government took it out of laundry detergents, years ago. And out of dish detergent about a year ago.
It's still sold in a few paint sections of hardware stores. Used to wash walls before painting. Be sure to read the ingredients, some TSP is silicate, not phosphate.
It greatly helped the detergent action. But, someone decided it was harming the environment.
Recently taken out of dish washer detergents, it had been removed from laundry detergent, years ago. Now, we all walk around in dirty clothes. And eat off dirty dishes.
Your government at work. New formula of the dish detergent no longer contains phosphate so the lack of it may be adding to your problems. Be sure you get real TSP and not some substitute with the same name.
I don't think the OP has looked at the clamp at the dishwasher. Could be either. This one is what is what is at my dishwasher, with a screw-type clamp at the sink. YMMV.
That's good enough! Screw on hose clamp - should be easy enough to remove and replace.
Well, that's not right. )-" I believe you need a one way valve called a check valve on the input to the disposal that only allows waste water to flow OUT of the dishwasher and not back into dishwasher discharge hose. That's not an area I am too familiar with so perhaps some of the plumbing experts here can advise you on how to best to prevent the backflow of gunk into the hose.
Can you adjust the hose or hang it from a pipe hanger so that it doesn't dip like that? You could make a J hook with a coat hanger (or buy one at HD for a buck) that would hold the hose high enough so that it wouldn't backflow as much. I'd still prefer a check valve.
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