Plumbing – Is this water heater drain configuration safe

drain-waste-ventplumbingsafety

I've just replaced my water heater and for the first time my house has a water heater drain pan. The washing machine waste line is nearby and I'd like to connect the water heater drain pan to this line before the trap. The proposed addition is shown in black:

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The only pitfall I can think of is that if there's a blockage downstream of the tee, the washing machine water can back up into the black pipe instead of having to build all the way to the top of the green pipe.

Keeping in mind that the picture is not to scale, how can I determine what distances are safe for this configuration? If the trap were ten feet below floor level, would this be considered safe? Are there other issues I'm not considering?

The alternative involves a 12' run to a sump pit. This would crowd my crawlspace with a long, low drain line and might interfere with a future radon mitigation system connected to the sump pit. Please suggest another alternative if you have one.

Best Answer

The configuration you pictured is not really a good idea. Waste water from the washer is going to flood the heater drain pipe, leaving nasty residues that could conceivably siphon back into the heater if connected to the heater drain valve. Not likely, but possible any time two drains are connected at different levels other than directly into the vented out flow pipe. The other problem will be that if the drain is a open pan drain only, washer waste water will back up into the pan. Washers tend to eject water quickly and can partially fill the pipe above the trap.

I would rather see you pump it up to the inlet of the washer drain.