05/04/2025
Washing Machine backing up into Dishwasher Drain
(I accidentally crossposted this like 6 times somehow and I'm so so sorry mods, I was NOT trying to spam. I dont know why it posted so many times)
The photos aren't great but its the best I can manage (also I'm going to clean the drain area more thoroughly once I can get into it better)
So my partner and I bought and moved into a 80+ year old house last year. A lot of the piping in the home is original cast iron, and we're trying to save up to have it replaced, which MAY fix the issues, but I don't know enough to know for certain.
The washing machine (GE) and dishwasher (Amana) hookups definitely are not original to the home, and they're installed side by side in the kitchen (with the washer/dryer being stacked). They have seperate drains, but they both lead to the same pipe in the wall. I'm having issues sometimes, when running a load of laundry, the drained water backing up through the dishwasher drain, running down the wall, and then flooding the kitchen floor.
My dad's helped us run an auger down the line, and has tried flushing it with a water hose and bladder as well. We had to replace a section of pipe in the front yard in January, as there was Orangeburg (?) pipe that had collapsed (which was a whole thing in itself). We also tried to extend the pipe the washer drain hose goes down into to make it longer (noted poorly with the horizontal line on the sktech) in hopes it would drain slower, but I'm not sure if that's made any difference.
Maybe anecdotally, it seems to do it less if I have a really big load in the washer (my dad's theory is that there's simply too many clothes for it to drain fast enough to flood), and more often if it's rained recently or I've had the sink running to hand wash certain dishes. It hasn't backed up with just the dishwasher itself running, as far as I can tell.
Would updating the plumbing potentially fix this issue? I'm unable to pull out the washer or dishwasher myself to get better photos of the pipes right now, but I drew what I can remember of the set up on my phones notes app - sorry for the super basicness. I believe the pipes are about 1.75" in diameter, at least part of the way. Past the bend I dont know what the pipes look like because they go under the floor and that section of the crawlspace is currently inaccessible.
