Nothing but the kitchen sink

In the inspector's report, I learned that the disposal in the left-hand side of the divided sink did not work. I was not super concerned about this; I haven't had a disposal in any place I've lived other than my parents' house. I figured that as long as the sink was working, a broken disposal was not a problem.

Which was true for about two weeks. The week of Thanksgiving, I realized that the left-hand sink basin just wasn't draining effectively. It would eventually drain. Eventually. Several hours later. Something in the broken disposal was not allowing it to drain effectively. The disposal had to go, which meant plumbing.

With YouTube as my trusty guide, I made a parts list. I would need: one drain tailpiece with a high line (for the dishwasher air gap), one waste pipe with an elbow, a sink drain and stopper, plumbers putty, plumbers cement (possibly not necessary, but whatever it was $5), a disposal wrench, a dishwasher drain line, a pvc pipe cutter (I went with a saw). I also ended up purchasing: an extra waste pipe with elbow (cut the first one 1/2" too short), dishwasher drain line one size smaller, this doohickey that connects my dishwasher drain lines of different interior diameters, and metal clamps. I borrowed a sink drain wrench from my uncle. Here's the under-sink situation when I started:

Removing a disposal is heavy and a bit gross, but surprisingly easy. I watched this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_pnSC_Uxck and found it pretty easy to follow. 

Here's where I got stymied: how on earth do you get the drain off there?! I did more YouTube searching and learned that there is a wire ring around the drain that is not a closed loop that holds everything together. I was too busy being mad at everything to remember to take a photo of this stage. Using a flat head screwdriver as a lever, pry it open, and everything should go much more smoothly from there. Eventually, I wound up here:

The disposal is gone, the waste pipe is gone, and though you can't see it, the drain is no longer in the sink. This took (excluding YouTube time) a max of 15 minutes. (Including YouTube time, it was the better part of an hour.) Putting in the new plumbing parts was straightforward but not so easy. 

I started by dry fitting everything. I cut the waste pipe down to size, yet somehow despite my care, it was a half inch short of what I needed. Two hours later, I had a new waste pipe from home depot's curbside pick-up. The drain tail piece could have been cut a tiny bit shorter to get a better slope toward the p-trap, but I decided it's minimal slope would work (n.b I am not a plumber and actual plumbers measure the slope of their drains; YMMV with this laissez-faire attitude). Once I had everything dry-fitted, I removed it and, starting at the actual drain, began the work of actually setting it all in. 

 

Above, you can see the tail piece (the part facing down) and the waste pipe with elbow - the part connected to the tail piece and then headed off to the right. You can also see the black pipe coming off the high line. This is the dishwasher drain line that goes to the air gap. The air gap is a funny round, capped, silver piece that sits on top of my sink with a little slot in the side. While I understand the physics of how an air gap works in theory - if you introduce airflow, water flows better, I do not understand what it is doing. It does appear necessary - my dishwasher is hooked up to it via that clear-ish line that runs along the bottom of the cabinet fro the left. It used to be connected to the disposal - you can just see the black tubing along the left hand side of the center bar in the photo with the disposal still present.

The drain got set in with plumbers putty. All the piping pieces got carefully painted with plumbers cement, which is super smelly and should be used in well ventilated spaces only. The dishwasher drain line got clamped on with metal clamps.

And here is my beautiful drain! In retrospect, I probably could have been more generous with the plumber's putty, but everything appears to be water-tight and solid two weeks later, so I think it's all good. 

And it was all good! Except for when I ran my dishwasher, and then opened the cabinet to grab a garbage bag from the box. This is when it became wildly apparent that the high line was a diameter of ⅝ inch and the air gap y branch was ⅞ inch and the dishwasher drain line had an interior dimension of ⅞ inch and running the dishwasher resulted in water in my sink cabinet. I had chosen ⅞ because that was what the last drain line had been. It turns out that the air gap intake on a disposal is a ⅞ diameter; on a high line it's ⅝ . At this point I threw up my hands and said, well I usually only use the dishwasher as a drying rack anyway, and walked away. 

Two weeks passed. Despite perusing Home Depot's website, I couldn't figure out what my solution was going to be. I REALLY didn't want the solution to be: buy a disposal, undo all my plumbing work, and install the disposal, but I was ready to go there if I had to. I happened to order my Christmas Tree Stand from Ace Hardware (I wanted a metal one; everyone else only had plastic or they had metal ones for like, over $100). When I got the email that it was ready, I needed a few other things - wood screws and brads, specifically - and so I went in instead of curbside picking up. I wandered into Ace's plumbing aisle and this poor Ace employee who was very kind and also clearly thought I was an idiot helped me to find a ⅝ in interior diameter dishwasher drain line and the piece that would connect my two different sized lines.

This would be my first of the “before Christmas Eve brunch” projects completed and it literally took me 20 minutes, which included the time it took to saw off a 14 inch piece of the ⅞ in tubing. 

I took a close up of the trouble point; in hindsight it’s pretty clear the drain line and the high line are not playing nice. For starters, after putting a correctly sized line on, the ⅞ line definitely went on too easily - because it was too big. 1/4 inch gap is kind of a lot of gap, y'all.

I removed the line from the high line and sawed off 14 inches of drain line to account for the 12 inch length of my new drain line. I probably could have taken several more inches off but. Oh well. I slid (okay, jammed) the ⅝ in line onto the high line and was immediately relieved to see that it looked much better. I clamped that down with a metal clamp.  

I inserted the doohickey (I totally made a point of reading the package to learn it’s name and have already forgotten) into the larger pipe and tightened the clamp, and then in stuck the smaller end of the doohickey into the smaller drain pipe and clamped it down and then boom! A dishwasher drain line that should work!

And reader, it does work. I laid paper towels down on the base of the cabinet and ran the dishwasher and the paper towels remained dry! Success!!!