Abject Failure

We needed a new dishwasher and, well, a free one sounded like a good idea at the time. Long story short: Sears will be sending over a new dishwasher at some point in the nearish future.

The Freecycle dishwasher turned out to have completely different-sized fittings from our old leaking one.

The electrical connection was no problem (although I found out that the dishwasher is on the "Main Lights" breaker instead of the kitchen or another sensible option).

The wastewater tube needed to be smaller than the existing one (and the one attached to the Freecycle dishwasher wasn't long enough to reach the disposal); so part of the first trip to Home Depot was a long piece of appropriate-sized hose, some clamps, a reducer to connect from the disposal to the hose, and a bard to mate the reducer with the hose. The new hose was on the long side (and at risk of kinking), so I had to trim it.

Then there was the water inlet. This is what doomed me. Dishwashers need and elbow piece that connects the solenoid with the supply line. The old elbow was still attached to the dishwasher with years of plumbers putty and other gunk. I figured it'd be best to leave that in place and to find a reducer or some other connector to fit it with my supply line. Three trips to Home Depot, one to Strosnider's Hardware, one to East-West ACE Hardware, and one to Northeast Plumbing Supply and eight connectors later, I had nothing.

I don't know if the old elbow was some odd size manufactured for six weeks in the 1970s in Guinea-Bissau or what, but I couldn't find anything that matched. 3⁄8" was too small; 1⁄2" was too big; flared, FIP, compression — nothing worked. Finally, I decided to risk damaging something to get the old elbow off and ... big surprise ... I damaged part of the solenoid.

With the expectation that no matter what, the new dishwasher would now leak (albeit it a much less visible and therefore probably more damaging place/way), I checked Consumer Reports and started looking for a new dishwasher. It is something we needed, but I really would have liked to have had a different way of going about getting a new one ... and now I need to see if the city will cart away two dishwashers for us.