Good quality kitchen sink on a budget

[David Hearn]

We're doing up our kitchen next week (units remaining, but worktops, tiling, walls + sink being redone) and we're having some difficulty sorting out the sink. Our budget for a sink was originally about £50 up to maybe about £80.

After looking at these sinks in B&Q/Homebase etc, I realised just how flexible some of these were - even from respected brands such as Franke. The drainer can often flex a lot when putting your hand in the middle of it, and monobloc mixer taps with long spouts flex like crazy when you move them. I've since realised that without plumbing in the tap, you won't have terrific strength to the tap - hence I'll probably try to use copper pipes rather than flexible tap connectors.

Our current sink is an old stainless steel single bowl + drainer with mixer tap using 2 holes. This doesn't really flex in the drainer, doesn't at all on the tap, but is quite scratched and doesn't drain properly causing scale marks - therefore we can't re-use it.

Anyway - we've since upped our budget to more like £150, maybe a tad more. I've seen the Blanco Median-XL sink which seems to fit our requirements on dimensions of the bowl (an additional small bowl would be nice, however these seem reduce the size of the main bowl too much as they all seem to be aimed at fitting the bowls within a single 600mm cupboard).

Getting to my point - is there any way to know what thickness steel is used in these sinks? The Blanco one is listed as "18/10 Premium Steel" which clears up the type of steel, but not the thickness. Blanco themselves say:

Q1: What qualities should I look for in a stainless steel sink?

A: Check on the quality. Premium quality stainless steel is always

18/10, because this represents the addition of chrome and nickel to the steel, which guarantees best performance, corrosion resistance and durability.

Q2: Why is weight important?

A: You will find that more steel has been used in the manufacture of a heavier gauge sink, with resulting increase in quality and durability. A lightweight sink is often made from thin steel to achieve cost savings.

Q3: What is the ?flex? test?

A: Quality sinks made of thicker stainless steel will resist movement of the drainer if pressure is exerted by hand.

Has anyone got experience with Blanco sinks, and can advise what their quality is like? Additionally can anyone recommend a good, reasonably stiff/thick SS sink with approx 40x40cm bowl which is around £150?

Thanks

David

[Robin Mayes]

Have you tried the Ikea range of sinks?

[David Hearn]

Nope - although after your suggestion I looked at their website. Only 2 are of the style we want, and both appear to be too small a bowl for what we're after. Their prices seem good though. Any idea of how thick the metal is?

D

[Andrew Gabriel]

Mount the tap in the worktop behind the sink, rather than through the sink itself. This will mean mounting the sink as far forward as you can in the worktop.

I have a single drainer 1.5 bowl stainless steel IKEA sink and it seems fine.

The IKEA sinks have nicely designed low profile rims compared with other ones I looked at. Also, you collect them from the warehouse where they haven't had customers jumping up and down on them unlike B&Q, Wickes, etc.

[DJC]

. Any idea of how thick

not very

[rjs]

Have you considered Franke?

***** expensive but not as expensive as Blanco. Ours has a very big (useful) single bowl (square with rounded corners actually) rather than several ridiculously small bowl-ettes and veg prep areas. It is undermounted in an Askilan worktop so debris can be swept straight into the sink for easy collection. Draining groves are cut into the worktop.

SWMBO dropped a *very* heavy glasss vase into it and dented the sink only slightly. It would have been better to have broken the vase but the dent is very small when you consider that the vase is 16" high and diameter of about 6" and made of 1" thick glass.

Richard