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We're in the process of redoing the kitchen and adjacent utility rooms at the moment.
Part of this is moving the washing machine from the kitchen into the utility room. We have power and a water supply there - that's the easy bit. The drain, on the other hand.... has to run to a boss connection on the outlet from a toilet between the two rooms. With a door between.
Option A is to install a drain pump and run the pipework up and over the door and back down.
Option B is to build up the step a little to the back door and run the drain along the floor then up about 200mm to the connection.
At the moment I favour option A, notwithstanding the potential unreliability of the drain pump.
Option B will be cheaper and easier, but there won't be any fall in the pipe and water will sit there when there's no pumping going on from the machine.
Is there an option C (not including digging the floor up)?
We sit our washing machines on a four inch high plinth - might that be an option?
Which way does the underground drain go? Could you tap into that?
Personal opinion about the pump idea - it'll look messy, if it fails it'll be a nightmare and it'll probably be noisy as well?
The second idea, can you put the drain slightly higher up the wall so you can get some fall on it?
Never trust a Saniflo pump. They are always full of sh*t...
(Pumps here in a house in the past, never a problem)
Pumps are a faff. We currently cannot use out loft bathroom as the pump/macerator has failed and is not accessible.
Our office kitchen sink has a macerator and pump and the outflow pipe goes up into the ceiling void, across another office and drains into the toilet block on the other side of the floor....
No need to raise the machine just raise the U bend, most machines pumps the waste out. So if the U bend is a high enough it shouldn't hard to achieve a fall under a step.
Does it look like this?
T=Toilet
W=Washer
__T__________|----------|__________W______
If the Stack is near the T then surely the proper job is to dig a new branch into the stack and put a drain to the right of the door.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions
@Tiger - Proper job without a doubt is to dig the floor up and put a new stub in, I've no idea what this would cost. I'm a middling DIYer but not dabbled with below ground drains.
The layout is as you show, step was the wrong word though (sorry - that was misleading) - more just a threshold - 40mm or so. I could take it up a little to get a 32mm pipe across with a tiny fall without too much of a trip above where it is now.
The machine would lift plenty to do this, U bend height is fine - there's room for that. The only issue is the rise to connect into the boss point behind the WC, although this would still be lower than the U bend.
Am I right to be slightly concerned about water sitting in the pipe? Or is not really an issue?
Never trust a Saniflo
The most misleading product name in history given that they aren't particularly sanitary and tend not to flow.
Where does the flexible drain exit at the back of the machine? They are designed to pump into a sink, aren't they? They even used to come with a plastic curvy thingy to hook the flexy pipe over the sink. So you should be able to achieve at least the height of the top of the machine, maybe more.