Plumbing a Kitchen Island
It’s one of the great paradoxes of home design: you can have an enormous kitchen, but if it’s laid out poorly, it can still feel cramped. The solution to your problems may not be more square footage; instead, it’s often better to put the square footage you have to smarter use, and a kitchen island can be a great way to do that. At its most basic, a kitchen island is just a few extra square feet of prep space sitting atop a few cubic feet of storage. However, a well-designed kitchen island can also incorporate a sink, stove, dishwasher, and other amenities — even using those features to double your number of available burners, or to handle a high volume of dirty dishes after entertaining. But if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, which is why a fully-plumbed kitchen island should start with a call to Ace Plumbing.
Why Plumbing a Kitchen Island is Challenging
Installing kitchen plumbing fixtures can be done quickly and easily by an experienced Sacramento plumber, especially since the hookups for gas, water, and electrical have already been designed to accommodate those features. With a kitchen island, things get complicated; after all, unless your home was specifically designed for an island, odds are better than even that the architect didn’t anticipate the need for water, drainage, venting, and electrical in the middle of your kitchen floor!
Kitchen Island Construction
Hot and cold water hookups are the easiest part of this process, since it’s just a matter of planning out where the island will go and running ancillary lines of the proper lengths off the mains. Wiring need not be difficult either (easy for us to say, since that’s the electrician’s problem). The drains and vents… well, that’s another story.
If you look under your kitchen sink, you’ll notice a P-trap that holds gases behind a small amount of stored water. Because of the configuration of the pipes usually precludes the use of a P-trap (and code requirements make a horizontal S-trap a non-starter), We’ll often install a loop vent and drain to keep your plumbing code-compliant and effective. Other arrangements are sometimes necessary based on space constraints and the design of the island; rather than belabor every last one of them here, we’ll simply suggest that you have us in for a consultation and estimate, during which we’ll customize a plumbing solution that’s best tailored to your needs.
Kitchen Island Options
Bear in mind that a kitchen island installation can be disruptive to your daily routine, so it’s always best to plan ahead. It’s also helpful to give serious thought to your workflow — who’s using your kitchen, when, and how. If you’re spending a lot of time cooking solo, an added prep surface with a sink and a bit of extra seating can be a godsend. If, on the other hand, your home entertaining tends to be an all-hands-on-deck affair with multiple helpers creating multiple dishes, you may find an additional stove and dishwasher just as helpful. The goal, in any case, should be to find what helps you enjoy your kitchen and put it to its best use. For help doing that, get in touch with Contact Ace Plumbing!