The other day I got a nice email from someone in San Francisco wanting to know where they could find a Johnson Tee air gap device for the dishwasher they were installing. They said they had been asking around and no one had ever heard of one. They had found a previous post that I had done about these air gap devices and were looking for additional information.
These devices are a great way to vent the dishwasher as the washer will then have its own trap and you won’t have to have that unsightly cap attached to the sink or the countertop. It also ensures that the air gap is well above the sink rim. It can be vented either through the countertop backsplash or wall—or to the exterior of the home. It also eliminates one more hose running through the cabinet space under the sink.
I replied that I thought they would be readily available at Lowe’s or Home Depot type stores or just do a Google search for them.
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Much to my surprise, I could not find even a hint of them on the Internet in terms of where I could actually buy one. There were several articles about them—of which several were my own blog posts.
So I went to Aurora Plumbing, one of the big local plumbing supply stores, and bought one. This was proof that I was not in the Twilight Zone or that I had not otherwise lost my marbles—well regarding this topic at least.
But to go back to the Twilight Zone a minute, a very strange coincidence occurred at the plumbing supply store. While I was at the check-out line the area rep for Johnson Industries, Inc was standing there and overheard me talking to the cashier about the Johnson Tee. It turns out that they are manufactured right here in the NW and were invented by the owner of the company, Bob Johnson, in 1979.
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The device has a registered patent dated 1980, which is just about the time I started using them in my houses in the early 1980’s all the way over on the other side of the country in Oswego, NY. The rep told me that they are only sold to plumbing supply distributors—hence you won’t find them at the wannabe plumbing stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot. This explains why when you Google “buying Johnson Tee’s” there just is not very much information.
The devices have a UPC stamp on them and should be acceptable in most jurisdictions, so check with your jurisdiction or ask your plumber. If your plumber has never heard of them you might want to find another plumber.
If you enjoyed this post, and would like to get notices of new posts to my blog, please subscribe via email in the little box to the right. I promise NO spamming of your emailI'm currently remodeling on the cheap (Mills Pride cabinetry and Home Depot stock countertops) to get the kitchen out of the 1960's (metal cabinets and no dishwasher). Due to the multiple doorways in my kitchen (there are 4) the cabinets are broken up enough that there isn't sufficient space for a full size dishwasher right next to the sink. My concern is how can I plumb a drain for a stand alone dishwasher? The power and hot water supply lines are simple enough but the drain has me a little stumped. The main drain line in the basement runs pretty close to where I want to put the dishwasher in the kitchen and it's PVC pipe which is easy to tee into, I'm just wondering about venting issues, trap design and so on.
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I if I had unlimited funds I'd just move the range and/or sink to another wall to make room for the dishwasher to have a sink drain to tee into but that is a lot larger of a project than I have time and money for right now.
How far away is the dishwasher going to be from the plumbing for the kitchen sink? We have done some pretty weird kitchen layouts at work (new modular home construction) and have always used either 5./8 or in your case 3/4 dishwasher hose to run from the drain line off the dishwasher to the dishwasher wye that we put inline on the kitchen abs. If you want you can shoot me some pics and ill see what i can do to help you out.
When I had a stand alone dishwasher in an apartment, it drained into the sink. The water came from an attachment on the sink faucet. When I finally moved into a house, I took the metal cabinet shell off and built it in. I had the metal cabinet kicking around for several years, using the metal for patches on rust damage on a car I was working on. It was a good heavy guage metal, enamal coated paint.
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The one above shows the sink and the dishwasher where I'd like it to go on the left. As you can see if I would put it to the left of the sink I'd have 3 problems:
3. It wouldn't open all the way without hitting the cabinets on the wall to the left (where I want to put the dishwasher), so I'd loose some cabinets and counter space to give clearance.
To the left of the sink is out also unless I move the range to another part of the kitchen and redesign the entire layout of everything:
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Is the range gas or 220? If its electric, I'd swap the range and the washer, were it my kitchen. The washer looks at home next to the sink, and is more functional there. The range does not need to be adjacent to it. The only reason i see for keeping it there is if you are tied down to a natural gas line or something. Good luck matching that counter top though
It's a 220v electric Bosch range. The advantage of keeping it at its current location is that it is on an outside wall so when I put in a range hood external venting will be relatively easy. The wall where the dishwasher is currently sitting is an interior wall, so I'd have to run a lengthy vent to the outside through a wall or the ceiling.
The countertops are going. Got some gray granite looking Formica tops to replace them (they were a discontinued color at Home Depot so I paid less than $100 on clearance for two 8 foot pieces and a 6 footer that I'll cut down to fit). Some of the old ones will make nice workstations in the garage though.
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I'm a plumber. I'm not sure what the laws are in PA but in CA you can't use an S-trap (a loop over vent). Hence, you need to vent up the wall to the roof. You don't HAVE to have the vent inside the wall. If you want to fir out the wall with a 4 inch chase behind the diswasher you can avoid tearing up the drywall, but you lose 4 inches of what already looks like a small kitchen.
If it were mine, I'd relocate the sink to either side of the counter (not in the middle) and place the dishwasher on the other side and vent and drain through the sink plumbing.
You can put a dishwasher anywhere you want. The key is the vent. Ideally if you can go up a wall and hit the main vent that is the best
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Yea...thought of that, I would have done that if I didn't think it would mess up the looks because the sink is symmetrical with the two windows right now. That and I'm doing this on the cheap....note that the sink base cabinet (which was the only existing wood cabinet in the kitchen) has new doors on the sides, I'm just hanging new doors on the existing cabinet to make them match the rest of the ones I plan to install.
I'm a plumber. I'm not sure what the laws are in PA but in CA you can't use an S-trap (a loop over vent).
I'm not sure what the codes are in this rural town. When I redid the bathroom it had a S-trap for the sink so I'd assume they are legal:
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The house is well and septic. The entire drain system in the house sometime in the late '90's was upgraded to PVC pipe by the previous owner (I have the receipts from the plumber he hired). I did note that there is only one main vent to the roof in the system (the bathroom side of the house which is the far side of the system). The kitchen is above where the system exits the house into the septic system. The kitchen sink is just S-trap'ed into the main line with no vent. Thought that was kind of odd, but I really don't have any experience with houses with septic systems (grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh).
So am I stuck? Where I want the dishwasher to
