I'm about to fit a Belfast sink with a hardwood worktop surround, but a friend mentioned that the taps can be a nightmare to maintain after they are fitted. The problem apparently is that the taps become inaccessible, since they are underneath the (fixed) worktop and the belfast sink support (cupboard underneath) doesn't provide any access method to the back of the sink - other than by having to rip the back of the cupboad off. :-( This is contrast to suspended sink units where you can reach underneath to get round the back etc.
Does anyone have any good ideas how to make these BS installations more maintainable?
|I'm about to fit a Belfast sink with a hardwood worktop surround, but |a friend mentioned that the taps can be a nightmare to maintain after |they are fitted. |The problem apparently is that the taps become inaccessible, since |they are underneath the (fixed) worktop and the belfast sink support |(cupboard underneath) doesn't provide any access method to the back of |the sink - other than by having to rip the back of the cupboad off. |:-( This is contrast to suspended sink units where you can reach |underneath to get round the back etc. | |Does anyone have any good ideas how to make these BS installations |more maintainable?
The sheds all sell flexible pipes for this purpose. Both short for sinks and long for baths.
I find this fashion interesting. We managed to dump Belfast sinks half a century ago, as they were and still are, a nightmare to maintain a cleanable, watertight joints between the sink and the wooden surface. Not to mention that, they chip, and are death to any pottery which you happen to have. They do seem to be in demand however as garden plant containers. Not much use as a reply I suppose, but a warning to others who may be tempted by the "fashion" trend. A friend's designer label resin sink, which is also a nightmare to keep clean (hard water area) has just split, as a result of standing a hot saucepan on the draining board. I didn't know this could happen.
We were talking about this yesterday, ours was taken out atthe first opportunity, together with its smelly drainingboard. That was in 1964.
Somehow we've acquired another eight of different sizes, they live in the garden because we can't be bothered to move them and one's a pond, begun by a son when doing GCEbiology in 1980. But a friend said that they were fetching £90 apiece on Ebay.
I can't be bothered with either the sinks or Ebay.
I confess we got one when we redid our kitchen. I don't know what your problems with them are. I find it much superior to a standard steel/plastic kitchen sink. The deepness is great for washing pans and filling buckets.
I think it depends on the design of the units. Obviously a Belfast/Butler sink is deeper so it's that bit harder to reach the tap connections from underneath, but it shouldn't be impossible: that would be plain bad design. (To put it in context I've come across a conventional sink where it was just plain impossible to get at the taps from below, too.)
For the Belfast sink nay-sayers ;-) it is actually going into a utility room where a large deep sink is great for filling buckets, washing large items etc. Also it doesn't look bad in a hard water area
- unlike stainless steel.
Back to the original problem, I think the design just has not been considered. I'm not sure how flexible pipe connectors solve the issue, it's the accessibilty to the underside of the taps that is the main problem. I think that having some sort of detachable back to the supporting cupboard underneath is the only sol'n.
The piping to ours was in the wall over the sink, they were tiles over. The outlets for the taps are still there, threaded brass. But disconnected.
I don't think they would be easy to maintain but they were part of the tidy thirties fashion when piping wasn't to be seen.
My godfather was a master plumber, when I was a child the bathroom in his large Victorian house was terrifying, he had heated copper towel rails, a fancy shower system, hot and cold water - all with exposed and beautifully shiny copper pipes (polished by the housekeeper, not him). His bath was huge ... probably porcelain. I didn't understand the controls, the piping was a labyrinth.
At home we had one sink in the scullery with cold water until my mother put in an Ascot geyser. Outside lav and warm baths at the municipal facilities next to the communal wash house, so UncleBill's fancy plumbing was a child's fantasy.
How often do you need access to the taps? Fit them with the sink unmounted, with extra long pipework ending in a compression coupling, mount the thing, and connect up.
That's a southern thing. In Yorkshire we use the alliterative, "Where there's muck there's money". Southerners have heard of muck and brass so connect the two, I suppose they think it's witty. Daft I call it.
They're not clean. They're very dark and full of some kind of web. And dust. Life's too short to clean embedded brass plumbing fittings. We left them because we can't replace the tiles and anyway we had a feeling that Belfast sinks would become fashionable again and if someone wanted to be a real purist they'd need the tap connections. Somewhere he has the taps. Trendy southerners are moving up here in droves. And 4 x 4s.
Indeed. He was very busy plumbing and buying antique musical automata, hewas a widower and his two motherless sons needed to be well cared for. The sons went to Australia or SA to mine precious metals, made a lot of money and came back, one became a famous cartoonist, the other a plumber.
It hadn't been invented in the 1940s, there was still sanity around. Or the government was otherwise occupied recovering from the war. She did what my dad didn't have time to do because he was busy doing shift work to provide a living for us. Quite right too. Someone needs to, just as someone needs to clean copper pipes and make meals.
Well, our steel sink is an old one (2nd hand in 1964) with integral double drainers, which don't harbour anything nasty, they're very easy to clean. It's way big enough to clean the biggest pan (I have and use several) and buckets aren't a problem either.
That's because, as has been explained before on this ng, we have two swivelling swan necked laboratory taps under which the deepest bucket or watering can could be filled. Not that we often have buckets in the sink and the watering can is filled from the butts outside these days.
Steel is kinder on crockery, it doesn't chip and, if necessary, is easier to move.
I wouldn't have plastic for the world though and modern double sinks are simply mad. Well, they wouldn't suit me, I like to have plenty of room to accommodate equipment too.
Yes, most of our crockery goes in the dishwasher, unless it has a special surface. Perhaps I should have included glasses -we don't trust the dishwasher with them.
There's normally no room and they're no hassle to wash manually. Although I'll bung one or two in to make up the space if there happens to be any when I'm kicking it off.
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