Kitchen drawers open by themselves!

[V10Mike]

I'm hoping the PH kitchen cabinet experts can help me with this one.

We had a new kitchen installed last year, and many of the drawers are extra deep, with 700mm or 750mm Grass soft close runners. The problem is that when they are loaded, they won't stay part open -if you open them one third of the way, they will continue to open on their own, accelerating as they go until they crash on the opening end stops -not good for china and glass!

We had the Grass rep in to look at them, and he sent a pair of runners back to Switzerland for testing, but the diagnosis was that there was no fault with the runners -apparently the specification allows 4% sag at max load. It seems abvious to me that a free running slide won't stay put on that much of a gradient. My personal view is that runner sections which are stiff enough for a standard 500mm runner are not up to the job of a 750mm runner.

So my question is, how do you get round this? The slides are currently installed square and level -should they be tilted down at the back? Problem then is that to get the drawer fronts parallel with the cabinet will be difficult.

Are we the only people to have ever had this problem?

[V10Mike]

singlecoil said:

I take it that the drawer boxes or the runners are distorting, and causing what was straight and level to bend into a downhill slope? You could of course try altering the angle of the runners by unscrewing at the back and, if they have any unused holes in the runners, set them at a downward angle and use the new holes to screw them in at that angle.

The runners themselves are bending, the drawer boxes are rigid plywood construction. The back of the runner attaches via a height adjustable plastic mounting, which could be repositioned to compensate for tilted runners.

singlecoil said:

If that's no good, would the drawers fit onto a different make? Reason I ask is that the heavily laden drawers in my workshop are on 750mm heavy duty Blum Tandem runners, and behave perfectly.

These runners are Grass Dynapro, to all extents and purposes identical to the Blum Tandem, with a 60kg weight rating. I just don't understand (a) why 4% deflection is acceptable and (b) how you could not then expect the drawer to fall open. If you push on the edge of an open, laden drawer, it really is quite bouncy -are your Blum runners perfectly rigid?

[V10Mike]

loughran said:

On a couple of occaions I have had this wayward run out problem but as I say, it`s an easy fix... drop the rear of the runners by 2=3 mil, then use the rear adjustment to compensate and bring the drawer front flush.

This. I got fed up with the fitters and had a go myself over the weekend. It's a surprisingly small adjustment to get them working properly -I ended up dropping the back of the runner 4mm (on 750mm runners), refixing the rear supports the same amount lower to level the drawer and everything now works as it should. The runners themselves are now not quite level when closed, but level when fully open and unloaded.