Kitchen Plumbing Services
Kitchen plumbing touches more than just pipe.
As a master plumber and licensed GC, Wes handles the rough-in, the supply, the drain, and the finish work in a kitchen remodel or new installation.
Kitchen plumbing in a remodel
Moving and adding connections.
A kitchen remodel typically involves moving the sink location, adding an island sink, relocating the dishwasher rough-in, adding a pot filler, or running a gas line for a range. Each of these requires opening walls or floors, modifying the drain stack tie-in, and running new supply lines. Getting the drain slope right and the vent connections correct prevents slow-draining sinks and gurgling after the wall is closed.
As a licensed GC as well as a master plumber, Wes handles the plumbing rough-in and the wall and floor work the rough-in requires. Get a quote for the kitchen plumbing scope.
Islands are where most kitchen plans hit a wall, and it is always the vent. A sink in the middle of a room has no wall behind it to run a vent up, so the code answer is an island loop vent, a fitting that rises as high as it can under the countertop, loops over, and drops back down to tie into the drain or run to a vent elsewhere. Done correctly it is invisible and it works forever. Done as an air admittance valve stuffed in a cabinet because it was faster, it works until the little rubber diaphragm gives up, and then the island sink gurgles and the kitchen smells. Wes builds the loop vent, and he figures out where it goes before the cabinets are ordered, because the fitting takes up real estate inside the island base.
The other planning item is the appliance list. A refrigerator with an ice maker and water dispenser needs a supply line and a stop valve at that wall. A dishwasher needs supply, drain, and a place to land the high loop. A pot filler needs a line in the wall behind the range at the right height, and it needs to be a run that will not freeze if that wall happens to be an exterior one. Give Wes the appliance selections and the cabinet drawing and he places all of it once instead of chasing it later.
- Sink relocation rough-in
- Island sink drain and supply
- Dishwasher rough-in relocation
- Pot filler installation
- Gas range line installation
- Drain stack modification and venting
- Island loop vent design and rough-in
- Refrigerator ice maker and water line
Kitchen drain and garbage disposal
The most-used drain in the house.
Kitchen drains take more abuse than any other drain in the house. Grease, food particles, and soap buildup combine to clog the drain line. A properly sloped drain with a cleanout access, a garbage disposal installed with the correct discharge angle, and a dishwasher drain routed with a high loop or air gap drains cleanly for years.
Wes installs or replaces kitchen drains correctly, with the right trap, slope, and connection to the stack.
Disposals cause more callbacks than any other kitchen appliance, and usually for boring reasons. The dishwasher knockout plug inside the disposal inlet does not get punched out, so the dishwasher backs up on its first cycle and everyone blames the dishwasher. The discharge tube gets angled up instead of down and food settles in the trap arm. The unit gets mounted to a thin sink without proper support and the mount works loose. Wes checks all of that on a disposal installation and runs the machine before packing up.
Hard water is the Front Range tax on a kitchen. Scale builds up inside faucet cartridges and aerators, and it will shorten the life of a nice pull-down faucet faster than anything else you can do to it. If the aerator clogs every few months and the spray head has white crust on it, that is not a faucet defect, that is your water. A filtration or softening setup is worth a conversation while the kitchen is already open, since the loop and the drain are far easier to run then. And if the kitchen line is backing up on a house that has never had it cleaned, the buildup is grease, and it wants jetting rather than a cable.
- Kitchen drain and P-trap installation
- Garbage disposal connection
- Dishwasher drain high loop or air gap
- Under-sink supply with shutoffs
- Drain cleanout access
- Old cast iron drain repair
- Faucet cartridge and aerator scale service
- Filtration and softener tie-in at the sink
New kitchen construction
Rough-in for a new kitchen or addition.
A new kitchen construction rough-in requires positioning supply lines and drain rough-ins at the correct locations for the planned cabinet layout. Wes coordinates with the cabinet installer and the contractor to position the rough-in where it needs to be before the floor and walls are finished. See our kitchen work.
Rough-in placement in a kitchen is measured off the cabinet drawing, not off the room. A drain that lands two inches off center might still be inside the sink base, or it might land squarely on a drawer stack and force a cabinet modification on installation day. Supply stops set too high collide with a drawer box. The dishwasher supply and drain need to come through the side of the sink base at a height that clears the machine’s own connections. Wes works from the shop drawing and confirms the appliance model numbers before he sets anything.
Then there is order of operations. Rough-in and the inspection come first, then flooring, then cabinets and countertop, then trim, which is when the sink, faucet, disposal, and dishwasher actually get connected. The undermount sink usually has to be at the fabricator before the counter is templated. Wes plans his two visits around that so the kitchen is not sitting unusable waiting on a plumber to come back, and so nothing new gets installed early and then damaged by the finish trades.
One plumber and GC for the whole kitchen
Kitchen plumbing done right.
Kitchen plumbing jobs that require both plumbing and general contracting are handled better when one person holds both licenses. Wes owns the rough-in and the patch. You get a complete result, not a sequence of subcontractors pointing at each other.
A kitchen is also the room a family cannot do without, so the schedule is the real deliverable. Wes tells you which days he needs the space and what will and will not be usable in between, and he holds to it. Gas work on a range line gets pressure tested and permitted rather than done quietly, because a gas leak behind a range is not the place to save an afternoon. If your project also touches the rest of the house, the remodeling plumbing page covers how the wider scope runs.
Call (303) 883-9075 to talk through a kitchen, or send the cabinet drawing and appliance list through the contact page for a straight quote.
How a call goes
Straight answer, fair price.
You call, we listen.
Tell us what is happening.
We look and diagnose.
No work quoted before the cause is confirmed.
Straight quote.
You know the cost before we start.
We do the work.
Tested before we leave.
Done right.
One master plumber and licensed GC, one point of contact.
Straight answers
Questions about kitchen plumbing services.
Can you move a kitchen sink to a new location?
Yes. Moving the sink means relocating the drain rough-in, possibly modifying where it ties into the stack, running new supply lines, and solving the vent for the new position. How involved it gets depends mostly on how far the new spot is from the existing stack and whether there is a wall behind it to run a vent up.
Do you install pot fillers?
Yes. A pot filler needs a supply line brought up inside the wall behind the range at the right height for the arm, plus a shutoff somewhere accessible. Worth knowing before you commit: if that wall is an exterior one, the line has to be routed on the warm side, which sometimes changes where the pot filler can go.
Can you run a gas line for a new gas range?
Yes. Gas piping is within a master plumber’s license. The line gets sized for the appliance input rating and the run length, it gets permitted, and it gets pressure tested before the range is connected. Converting an electric kitchen to gas is more work than extending an existing line, since the run has to come from the meter or an existing branch.
How long does kitchen plumbing rough-in take?
A straightforward sink relocation is often half a day. A full remodel with the sink moving, an island going in, a dishwasher relocating, and a gas line added usually runs two to three days of plumbing, split between a rough-in visit and a trim visit weeks later once cabinets and counters are in.
Why does my island sink gurgle and smell?
Almost always a venting problem. Island sinks need a loop vent, and when one was never built the shortcut is an air admittance valve under the cabinet. Those have a rubber diaphragm that eventually stops sealing, and then the trap gets siphoned and sewer gas comes up through the drain. The permanent fix is building the vent the way it should have been built.
Do I need an air gap for the dishwasher, or is a high loop enough?
It depends on which jurisdiction you are in, and Wes will know for yours. A high loop, meaning the drain hose secured up under the countertop before it drops to the disposal, is accepted in a lot of places. Some still require the air gap fitting on the deck. Either way the point is the same: keep drain water from siphoning back into the machine.
Can you add a water line for a refrigerator ice maker?
Yes. It needs a supply line run to that wall and a proper quarter turn stop valve, not a saddle valve clamped onto a copper pipe. Saddle valves were common for years and they are a slow leak waiting to happen behind a refrigerator nobody moves. If you have one, replacing it is a small job worth doing.
My kitchen drain keeps clogging. Is that the disposal?
Usually not. In an older house the kitchen line has years of grease coating the inside of the pipe and the opening has narrowed to a fraction of the pipe. A cable punches through it and buys a few weeks. Jetting scours the wall of the pipe and actually restores the line. A camera down the drain tells you which situation you have before spending money on the wrong one.
Kitchen plumbing project?
Call Wes. One master plumber and licensed GC for the whole job.