Upper floor rental- washing machine disaster prep

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jeffpas

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Hi- basically what I have is a second floor in a building which I am eventually going to rent out as an apartment.
I have hired a plumber to add hookups and drain so that the renters can have a washing machine and dryer- which I believe is worth the trouble. Too late for that debate.

Now, what I'd like to do is be prepared in case the (we assume to be) careless renters flood their washer.
Attached are pictures of what the plumber did both on the 2nd floor, and below the room downstairs which is a utility room. You can see the white drain pipe going around the ceiling of the downstairs room, and down into the septic stack. Also you can see upstairs where he added a venting stack for the drain. OK, he's a professional plumber, we assume he knows his stuff.

Now what I would like to do..... is put a drain next to the pipes upstairs, basically cut a hole in the floor for a 2" PVC pipe but, then where does it go safely?

If you look at the basement picture where the laundry drain connects to the stack [pic #4], you can see an unused black stack next to it, that tees into it. That's the obvious answer I would assume would work (tell me if you doubt)- connect floor drain to black stack. However......then I have to run an entire second 2" pipe all the way around the room connecting that to the floor drain, that only gets used on the off chance the upstairs washer floods. Expensive, takes up space, looks crummy too. Is there a smarter way?

What I would LIKE to do instead is tee off the plumbers washer drainpipe up at the top under the floor, combining the floor drain and the washer drain to one pipe [pic #2]. Simpler, uses a lot less space and money. My fear however is that when the washer is run, then water may overflow/back up the floor drain upstairs.

Can anyone tell me if this physically would happen, or not via gravity and physics? Obviously once I cut into the pipes and test, etc, its too late.

:/

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The water lines and stand pipe seem a little low to me. And i am not sure using a aav is approved. hopefully someone else in this forum can answer that part. i would not use a tee i would use a wye fitting. i would run a seperate line for floor drain
 
I'm not following you say a WYE fitting into the original pipe, but you also said run a separate pipe. So combining would work then? I would rather not run a whole additional pipe across the room downstairs just on the off chance of a leak, it seems like overkill.

I know the separate pipe would be preferable but would combining pipes work, or would water come out of the floor drain upstairs aka overflow when the washer is run based upon that setup, the level of the drain, stand pipe, etc? That's what I'm really trying to determine ahead of time.

Also there is the matter of sewer gas, regardless of separate or combined. My thinking would be either way, to put a pipe U in (sorry don't know the plumbing term) to trap some water and block the gas, though I'm not sure if standing water would stay in such a pipe if water only went down it say, once every 5 years when the washer floods. Surely someone experienced at this knows a solution.....



:confused:
 
Last edited:
thanks guys, finally I came up with a solution we can close this
 

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