Lemme guess, you keep opening up your dishwasher, and you know that they last time you peeked inside there was no water left, but you keep seeing standing water in the dishwasher, don’t you? Well there are a few reasons why this happens, as I have dealt with this problem literally hundreds of times, and I do one thing to get rid of standing water in dishwasher once and for all, and let me tell you that it works about 95% of the time. Most of the time your problem is that the drain hose is not mounted properly, which if you know a thing or two about the gravity of water and how it flows, when you run water from your sink, your dishwasher is going to fill up with water unless you have the drain line mounted above where the water fills up. Look at this picture for example, this is a dishwasher that always seemed to have standing water in it, even when it was not in use.

Now in case you did not know your drain line is coming out of the garbage disposal here, right above the white piping which is the drain line for the sink. When the dishwasher goes through the drain cycle, it will drain the water into the garbage disposal using the motor, the way that this is set up, not all of the water is going to get drained properly and some will go back inside of the dishwasher. Also, if you are running the water in the sink, there is a good amount that is going to go down that drain line, as this is how gravity works. All we have to do to fix this is mount the dishwasher drain line, above the garbage disposal, where most of the water accumulates at from both the drain cycling and using the kitchen faucet to rinse dishes or whatever. This is how the dishwasher drain line should be mounted so that there will no longer be any standing water in dishwasher.

Now this will prevent dirty water from going back into the dishwasher. What I used to mount the line was a piece of metal stripping and two screws into the wall. You do not necessarily have to use the exact same thing as I did, but it was the only thing that I had on hand at the time. Many new dishwasher drain hoses come with a plastic loop around the hose that has a hole in it, guess what that is used for, mounting the dishwasher line! As I said, whenever I get a service request about standing water in dishwasher, this solves the problem 95% of the time.

Now there is one more thing wrong with this dishwasher drain line that could potentially cause a problem in the future, can anyone see what it is?

Everyone knows that do it yourself home improvement projects are the best to add to the value of your home, but not all do it yourself projects are easy to do. This though is one exception, as if you have any kind of handyman ability in you at all then I can tell you that it is easy as hell to learn how to install a dishwasher, and I believe if you were clueless on how to install a dishwasher after reading this I am sure that you will be able to complete this task in a couple of hours. For a professional this will take about 30 minutes for the beginner it may take 2 hours or more.

Attention: Before you start anything whether it is installing or uninstalling the dishwasher make sure that the circuit to the dishwasher is fully secured and the hot water supply going into the dishwasher is fully shut off. Failure to follow this could result in severe injury, death, or flooding of your home! If you have any doubts understanding the above DO NOT ATTEMPT TO INSTALL A DISHWASHER OR UNINSTALL A DISHWASHER!

I will be eventually putting up a video on how to install a dishwasher but for now you will have to use the pictures that I took as a guidance tool and I will try my hardest to type out every detail possible to ensure that you do not miss anything at all. For this tutorial I will be teaching you how to install a GE dishwasher, and the same methods will apply to almost every type of dishwasher that is out there.

As you can see this is the opening that we will be working with when installing the dishwasher. As you can see I had already removed the old dishwasher. If you do not know how to uninstall a dishwasher all you really have to do is read my installation steps backwards.

Some things that need to take place before we begin the installation process, which since this is a DIY home improvement project I am assuming you had an old dishwasher installed previously, if not you are going to need the following.

- A place to drain the water to….In this dishwasher installation tutorial I will be using a garbage disposal to hook up the drain line. All new garbage disposals come with a drain hook up for dishwashers.

- Hot Water Supply….This will usually be the hot water supply to your faucet, usually. If you are making room for a dishwasher and do not have this there are valve attachments that you can install to the hot water supply.

- 120 Volts…..Most of the dishwashers, actually all of the dishwashers that I have installed in my life have been hard wired, meaning you need to connect the wires by using wire nuts. But I know there are some that are not. For this you will need the cord attachment as well as the plug to insert the cord in.

These are the parts that you are going to need to install the dishwasher. What you are seeing above here are the drain line to the left, and to the right you are seeing the supply line kit. The supply line kit comes with the dishwasher supply line along with a 90 degree brass fitting that will be installed on the bottom of the dishwasher. The silver thing to the left of the dishwasher drain line is the electrical cover where you will joining the electrical connection at.

This is the GE dishwasher that we will be installing in this tutorial. As you can see it is straight out of the factory and you will need a pair of pliers to remove the screws from the wood, after you remove them insert them back into the bottom of the dishwasher as this will be what we us to adjust the height of the dishwasher and make it level.

Next get your roll of teflon tape and you brass fitting and wrap the threads with the teflon tape. This will not only help prevent leaks it will also preserve the threads so if you have to remove it a couple years or more down the road, you will not have to struggle to hard to break it free.

Now grab your channel locks, or your wrench and we will begin to install the the brass supply line fitting to the bottom of the dishwasher, you do not have to have it muscle man tight but make sure that it is pretty snug.

Next we will be hooking the drain line up to our new GE dishwasher, this is usually located in the center bottom of the dishwasher.

As in the picture above you will more than likely need an all purpose 6 in 1 screwdriver to tighten the supply line onto the bottom center of the dishwasher. Again make sure that it is snug it does not have to be super tight as this piece is usually plastic, just tight enough to where it is not going to leak.

Once you are done with that make sure that you have a hole cut out so you can get under the sink to hook up the connections. If you are replacing a dishwasher you should already have this. Run the hoses through the hole and slide the dishwasher into the opening keeping the dishwasher above the electrical cord as that will be hooked up in the front.

As you can see above I am hooking the drain line up to the garbage disposal. I will be using a small clamp for this that is tightened with the hex head of a 6-in-1 screwdriver. You can tighten this down pretty tight and it should not hurt anything. One important thing about the drain line is make sure it is mounted to the wall higher than the garbage disposal connection is. If it is not then gravity will do its work and when you are running water down your sink a good portion of it is going to end up in your dishwasher. There are many ways that you can mount the drain line if you need further instruction then just leave me a comment and I will cover it in the best detail that I can.

Next step that is show above is me mounting the supply line to the hot side of the kitchen faucet valve. We want hot water not cold, cold water will not clean dishes for shit. Many dishwashers recommend that you will need a water temperature of 140 degrees to ensure proper cleaning of the dishes. You can check this by adjusting or looking at what your water heater thermostat is set to.

After you have the supply line and drain line hooked up all you have to do is hook up the electric to make the dishwasher function. I use wire nuts to do so and once I am done doing this I will be installing that little silver panel you seen in the first picture of this post.

Next you will want to adjust the feet of the dishwasher to make it level. The feet are what was attached to the wood in the picture that was at the beginning of this post. Once I got the height right I am going to secure the dishwasher to the counter top with some wood screws. Make sure that when you do this that the screw will not pierce the top. I believe here in this picture I am using a 1/2 long wood screw, which is enough to keep the dishwasher from rocking and plenty of room to dig into the wood without piercing the surface of the counter tops.

That is it now all you have to do is test your dishwasher installation. Turn the circuit back on to the dishwasher and turn the hot water back on to the dishwasher and run a full cycle. Keep your eye open for any leaks. That is all you have to do to be able to install a dishwasher. If you have any questions or if I missed anything just leave me a comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible.