I've got a laundry room on the second floor, and when it was remodeled the contractor put in a drain pipe, but no drain pan. At the moment, I have the washing machine hooked up, but it's away from the wall and the drain pipe.
I picked up a drain pan only to find that its shape and features weren't conducive to a good installation, so I ended up getting this one from Driptite. I feel a lot better with this pan because it'll lay flat regardless of where I drill the hole for the drain pipe.
Now here's my issue — I just don't know how to install it properly. The drain pipe isn't centered with the hole in the floor, it's angled, and I don't know how to patch the area around the pipe. This is what it looks like:
I can drill a hole in the pan in the right spot, but then how should I really make a good seal with the pan? The pan came with a PVC fitting that is not the right size for the pipe, and I'm actually not sure how it's expected to go together. This is what I was given with the pan:
I assume that it's supposed to go in upside down from the way it is in the picture, otherwise the water level in the pan would have to be ridiculously high before it drained. So let's just pretent that the fitting actually fit the drain pipe (it doesn't right now) and I flip it over. It would still sit way too high because the fitting wont go down into the floor since the pipe is off-center!
At this point, I was thinking that I would need to do the following to finish this project:
- Fill in the hole in the floor with something. If so, what should I use? Maybe some kind of silicone sealant / caulking? Is there a particular kind I should use for the floor? Is this a bad idea?
- Cut the hole in the drain pan at the right spot. Sadly, this is the only step that seems pretty straightforward. I would cut it to be as close as possible to the diameter of the fitting
- Caulk around the interface between the pipe and the drain pan. The only thing here that scares me (a lot) is that when I put the washing machine in, it'll probably shift a little, and I would expect there to be a big risk of tearing the caulk and compromising the seal.
Perhaps there's another way to deal with this?
- I could try to finesse (heat up) the pipe and bend it a little to be more straight, then find a fitting that will actually fit over the pipe snugly.
- I would then have to cut the pipe little by little until the screw portion of the fitting is flush with the floor
- Cut a hole in the drain pan the right diameter to fit over the threaded portion of the fitting
- Slide over rubber washer
- Screw on nut
After typing all of this out, I bet the second approach is the "right" way to do it, though the bit about heating / bending the PVC makes me a little uneasy.
Can anyone offer their suggestions and / or solutions?
UPDATE — I picked up a better fitting and attached it to the pipe to see how much needs to be cut:
The bottom of the wrench flats is about 1.5" from the floor, so I imagine that's how much I will need to cut. If I do that, the bottom of the pan will have to bulge up a little where the fitting is, as I'll need to put a rubber gasket ring below the pan since the plastic nut can't screw down all of the way (the thread is tapered). This ends up being about 3/8"… has anyone had issues with their drain pans bulging a little? I guess my main concern is that this means the water will tend to flow away from the drain… but as long as I cut the fitting low enough and it's below the lip of the drain, I should be okay. Perhaps it would be a good idea to cut the wrench flats off and shorten the fitting so that it can be mounted even further below the level of the floor?
Best Answer
Go with your second approach of getting the right size fitting except don't bend the pipe, just deal with the angle. You pan lip should be higher than the ending (with fittings) top of the drain pipe so it can drain but that's all you need.
Why? PVC fumes are extremely toxic and you have a significantly better chance breaking the pipe than fixing the angle; then you'll have to tear up the floor to fix the pipe. A washer machine drain pan is used for worst case scenarios, not day-to-day use so as long as water can drain you'll be fine and a slight angle may actually decrease the minimum height of the drain anyways.
As for drilling the hole in the pan, mark it in place and drill it somewhere else with a sacrifice piece of wood/etc. underneath. You don't want to hold it up or anything because you'll need a decent amount of pressure to hold a bit in place and plastics like to fracture if not properly supported.