Archive for the ‘House’ Category.

Appliance installers

I just spent30 minutesfixing our dishwasher. This is an almost new dishwasher that we bought and had installed about a year ago.Once in a while the front of the dishwasher would drophalf an inchand the door would no longer open (it would jam on cabinet trim).I would lift it back upto the right height and ignore it for a while.

It happened again yesterday and since this is a long weekend I thought I’d check it out. I pulled off the trim pieces and discovered that the appliance installers had setup the dishwasher’s feet to sit on the edge of the floor. The finish flooring doesn’t go very far under the cabinets and they had setup the dishwasher’s feet to sit right on the edge of what flooring is there.The dishwasher’s feet have 1″ circles, but only about 1/4″ sat on flooring.As you can imagine it won’t take many open and close cycles of the door for the dishwasher to move 1/4″ and drop down to the subflooring.

The fix was simple, I used some scrap wood the same thickness as the finish flooring and put it under the feet to give them better support.

This is not the first fix that I’ve had to do for this dishwasher installation. Right after they finished I redid all of the drainage plumbing because they had set it up in a way that was a disaster waiting to happen. There were about 4 different diameters of tubing all coupled together with hose clamps and weird adapters where it joins up with the garbage disposal. I went to the hardware store and got the right adapter and spent 20 minutes fixing it.

I dislike that themarket’s driveto the cheapest possible prices has brought us to the point where this kind of stuff happens. The installation was “free” but of low quality. I should have just done it myself (or the appliance store should have a real plumber do the job and charge for installation). I’m fearful of what “free” appliance installers might do incorrectly when dealing with gas lines and more dangerous appliances.

alex