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George, George, George,
I have no financial interest in your countertop, so here goes.
It is only a countertop. Perimeter support will be perfect. Make sure the seam are lapped with a secondary piece and make sure there is support a minimum of 3″ to any opening.
Also check for heat tape around the cooktop opening. Make sure you get a save piece (scrap from the same dialot) and make sure the countertop fits the way you expect.
Then have a cold beer and enjoy your countertop. Like I said, I have fabricated and installed close to 10,000 counters and it will be just FINE.
Good Luck,
Todd,
I have been told that Corian does have the best “printed” warranty, but when it comes down to a claim, it is always the homeowners fault, which is not covered. I might be wrong, but I think there has been discussion of this on another BB
George,
email me your fax number, I have no problem faxing the pages that will help you with your install. No $10.00 payment neccessary. The Dupont site does have a section with the fab manual but it is reserved for the use of Certified fabricators only and requires a password.
The issue with full underlayment is that it does not allow the heat to dissapate into the cabinet box. Earlier in the post someone spoke of putting a hot pan on the top and the underlayment causing a failure, the cosmetic damage would far out-weigh the structural damage in that case. What Corian is trying to prevent is something closer to the example of a crock-pot, electric coffee pot or other long use heat source. When you leave it on the top for long periods of time the heat builds up in that area, with full underlayment the heat can’t dissapate into the cabinet and away from the top, instead the heat builds up and causes expansion in a small area. Because the material doesn’t dissapate heat very well horizontally the stress from the heat causes a failure in that area. Without underlayment the heat would escape into the cabinet.
Sorry about the flashy website, we are in a major remodeling phase on the site, our new site is set for release early next week. Tune in then, you’ll be impressed. By the way, if you were to use the product you saw on the site we could have avoided this entire conversation.
gshell wrote
Sorry about the flashy website, we are in a major remodeling phase on the site, our new site is set for release early next week. Tune in then, you’ll be impressed. By the way, if you were to use the product you saw on the site we could have avoided this entire conversation.
Gordon,
If you advertised on this site more fabricators would use your product, this homeowner may have had that choice. [EMO]glasses.gif[/EMO]
Andy wrote
Gordon,
If you advertised on this site more fabricators would use your product, this homeowner may have had that choice.
Andy,
(1) A wag of the finger for such a shameless plug!
…but you’re right: I had never heard of EOS before. Too late for THIS project, but (Gordon) I WILL be building my OWN mansion over the next year, and you can bet EOS will be in the consideration!
(2) There won’t be a “cooktop” placed in the Corian, but it will adjoin a standard standalone oven/cooktop combo. What is “heat tape”, and would it be needed in that application?
George
Hi, Gordon,
Quick response: please check with “Teresa Knight” for my fax number – I emailed it yesterday. Thanks for your offer to send the pages, and for your explanation! Very helpful.
George
George,
I hope you liked that plug.
As for heat tape, it really isn’t required for a slide in oven. It is used around the cooktop opening to dissapate the heat down and away from the material. Most new cooktops don’t have a real issue with too much heat buildup around the cooktop box, but the tape is required to satisfy warranty standards.
George, we are in okc and do probally two to three tops a week. We use the strip method because it is the only method allowed by almost all solid surface producers. We either run the srips front to back every sixteen inches or run them the long way depending on cabinet bulkhead design. We do add a center strip if run the long way.
I have one question. Why are you using this company if you don’t trust their competence? If I remember correctly, you were using a sears contractor, so you are paying top dollar for your top. Sears is taking a huge chunk out of the job, leaving less dollars to do the job right.
Next time find a good independent fabricator and listen to his advice. Second, don’t question what the manufactures set as fabrication rules, their butt is on the line for the next ten years and if they overengineer for safety, it is money out of the fabricators pocket, not yours. Most of them have decades of experience with their own product and their goals are the same as yours, a long lasting product.
Around here we catch hell from ignorant home builders and consumers when we put the plywood substrate on our tops. They usually shut up after we fax them the fabrication manual pages. Apparently we are one of the few using the proper methods.
al wrote
<snip>
I have one question. Why are you using this company if you don’t trust their competence? If I remember correctly, you were using a sears contractor, so you are paying top dollar for your top. Sears is taking a huge chunk out of the job, leaving less dollars to do the job right.
Next time find a good independent fabricator and listen to his advice. Second, don’t question what the manufactures set as fabrication rules, their butt is on the line for the next ten years and if they overengineer for safety, it is money out of the fabricators pocket, not yours. Most of them have decades of experience with their own product and their goals are the same as yours, a long lasting product.
Around here we catch hell from ignorant home builders and consumers when we put the plywood substrate on our tops. They usually shut up after we fax them the fabrication manual pages. Apparently we are one of the few using the proper methods.
Ah, Al … your innocence is so refreshing!
(1) Do you REALLY trust ANYBODY? I mean, REALLY? “Trust me”? If I had a nickel for every time I haven’t trusted some contractor, and was RIGHT, I could BUY DuPont!
(2) We went with Sears BECAUSE they have a “name” – and deep, easily reached financial pockets. With all due respect to independent fabricators, many of them come and go within a few years (leaving behind no financial traces.) And many of the ones that have been in business for 30 years, are still doing things they way they did 30 years ago! (“Cory-who?”) Clearly, there are downsides to both “big name” and “independent” fabricators. Also, we had already taken several steps down the road with Sears (including a contract) when we decided to add in the Corian top. It’s usually better not to change horses in the middle of the stream, unless your horse is dead.
(3) If Sears and/or the Corian installers HAD faxed me the fabrication manual pages when I first brought this up (as you described above), I would have shut up myself! Instead, I heard this story about heat dissipation that made no sense to me. And if somebody can’t back up something they’re spouting, either with some physics that makes sense OR a factory specification, I start wondering.
(4) “Their [the manufacturer’s] butt in on the line for the next ten years”? Please. At least ONCE in this very thread, it’s been mentioned about how DuPont snatches at ANY excuse to get out of warranteeing their product. It’s a lot easier to make sure the job IS done to the manufacturer’s specs BEFOREHAND, than to try to assign blame after a failure.
(5) There IS a possible ulterior motive for a fabricator using “strips”: it’s CHEAPER. Only a few bucks, you say? You and I have BOTH seen otherwise-professional-appearing people create shoddy finished products by using the $1.00 part instead of the $4.00 part. There MIGHT be a good reason why they’re doing this (in this case, there was), but then again, there might NOT be!
******
One thing I’m sure of: an underlayment that is constructed by placing a solid sheet of plywood on top of the cabinets, and then cutting away all the parts that “don’t look like perimeter support”, will ALWAYS be stronger than something put together from sticks. (Look at it this way: there’s a 100-foot chasm you have to cross. There are two bridges: one is made up from sticks of 3″ wide plywood nailed together, and one is cut from a singl sheet of 3/4″ like I’m describing. Which one will you choose to walk across?) Is that “over-engineering”? Maybe. Is that a bad thing? Ask the guys at Mercedes-Benz or Rolls-Royce.
I am very grateful that there is now a Forum like this one, where a person can get responses from a wide variety of professionals that are actually doing the work (and that includes YOU, AL! [EMO]bigsmile.gif[/EMO] ) It sounds to me like you are an “independent fabricator” who is a little bitter from being aced out one too many times by a “big name” fabricator. Advice from me to you: you would probably do better if you worked on losing your attitude about “ignorant home builders and consumers.” We might be “uninformed” or “not familiar with the product”, but most of us are not “ignorant”; and NONE of us enjoy hearing ourselves characterized in that way!!
Cheers,
George
gee bee i personally think u have way to much time on your hands and i really think u owe the carpentorshop an apology everyone here has been overly patient with you and all have explained there opinions and fact according to dupont i believe dupont has spent massive amts of $$$on testing the product and its specs i can assure u that they stand behind the product and no they dont always say it is the homeowners fault some times it is fabricator error but i have done many repairs for warranty related issues for them in the western carolins south carolina tenn virginia all over we all have differt views on the subject of build up but all suffice and have for yrs again i would ask you to be kind to those who u r asking advise and respect the work they have done for many yrs thank you and have a great day sincerly eric markey /certified fabricator /[EMO]tonguetied.gif[/EMO] personal creations
George, your statement that solid surface is fabricated according to manufacturer specs is to save money. When I first got into this business my first thought was that I could (reface) existing laminate countertops with solid surface. This would have been a huge savings of not having to remove the existing countertop, I wouldn’t need any support strips they would already be there with the existing substrate of the laminate top. Much to my surprise this is not allowed for all the reasons you have been given already. So it’s not about fabricating to save money, it’s about being an actual engineer, not a self proclaimed one.
Ooooh, scratched a nerve, did I?
Norm: read this document from a previous post of mine in this thread: (http://www.corian.com/corian/documents/pdf/spandesign.pdf) In it, DuPont states that you CAN do just what you said you can’t. So even DuPont is not always consistent. And remember: I’m only just NOW finding out that perimeter support IS “manufacturer’s specs”. I didn’t say that manufacturers had an incentive to do underlayment cheaply; I said that fabricators do. And that’s a fact; however, the good fabricators will ignore such incentives, while the bad ones…
Who am I?
- I am not a person with an “agenda”, other than getting answers with more behind them than “because [“DuPont” or I] told you so. (I’ve never done well with organized religions, either – for the same reason.)
- I am in fact 3/4 of an engineer: three years of Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan. My degree is in Information Systems Management. Yours?
- I have anything BUT too much time on my hands; but I DO have time to make sure an $8000 Corian install is being done correctly.
- I am someone who is close enough to the epithet “home builder or consumer” to have my hackles raised when someone insinuates that I might be “ignorant” for questioning the word of an Almighty Fabricator.
Was I “unkind” to Al? Not out of keeping with the tone of his post, I thought. I certainly didn’t imply that he was “ignorant”!
C’mon, guys. I’ve tried to keep a sense of humor throughout my posts. Basically, all I’ve done is practiced “Socratic wisdom”: I’ve asked questions. If you can’t (or don’t want to) answer with something better than “because”, then hey, don’t! (Some posters HAVE backed their answers up with good factual explanations (hi, Gordon!) and some haven’t.) I’ve always found that GOOD contractors are not bothered by people asking questions, and they have the knowledge to provide good explanations. In fact, that’s one way I separate the “wheat from the chaff” when trying to choose a contractor. If you’re bothered by people asking such questions, I would propose (a) maybe you don’t your stuff as well as you think you do, and (b) you’re probably losing business to people who AREN’T bothered!
All of you can (theoretically, at least) advise me on countertop fabrication. Likewise, I am in a position to advise YOU on how you come across to the public. Remember, your future customers may be reading what you say here. My advice to Al was on the topic of public relations. If he’s thinking of consumers or builders as “ignorant” for asking questions (and looking for a way to “shut them up”), it’s probably coming across in his business as well. Got all the high-paying business you need? OK, feel free to ignore old George. (And can I borrow $1000?) [EMO]wink.gif[/EMO] I just think it’s massively disingenuous of any of you to infer that using an “independent fabricator” (and trusting them without question) is the solution to all ills (much less an obvious solution that I should have known.)
Still, I thank ALL of you (Al and Norm and Novoids and everybody) for expressing their opinions. I believe everybody can learn and benefit from the process, and from Forums like this one.
Thanks (really!)
George
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