I’ve seen it done a few ways – “hard” plumbing with copper all the way up into the dishwasher water supply fitting, PEX tubing, and flexible tubing installations. I personally have run copper all the way up to the dishwasher in the past, simply because I didn’t have flexible tubing on hand. When a dishwasher component broke a couple years later, I had to cut the copper to get the dishwasher out. PEX tubing really isn’t any better, it’s still rigid enough to require, at a minimum, disconnecting it from the dishwasher to pull the appliance out.
The best solution, in my opinion is a flexible line. Vinyl is a good material for this, and you can find vinyl tubing in 10 foot sections at just about any hardware store. I went with the braided vinyl tubing
If this is your first shot at a plumbing job, you may be wondering how we’re going to connect vinyl tubing to our existing copper water lines. And, whether or not it’s going to involve sweating a fitting on the copper with torch and solder. We’re going to do this without solder, for about $20, including the vinyl tubing.
The job is a lot simpler than it sounds. If you have a pipe cutter handy, great, just cut the copper supply pipe as close as you can to the dishwasher. Otherwise, break out that hacksaw and try to make a straight cut. Luckily, SharkBites are a little more forgiving than solder, so do the best you can. A plumber will tell you to sand the end of the pipe after you cut it, but to be perfectly honest, I have skipped this step before and haven’t had any problem. If you are sweat fitting the adapter onto the copper – sand it down, with out a doubt. They sell little round wire brushes that fit right over 1/2″ pipe to make easy work of this.
Beyond that, just have a look at the image below for guidance.
Your next step will be to connect to you dishwashers water inlet. As I stated above, my model sported a 3/8″ inlet, so be sure to get a barbed fitting that will step down to 3/8″.
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