Cooktop Cutout Crack Repair

This is a Formica Solid Surface countertop. It has a pretty severe crack coming from the cutout for the cooktop. This job is not covered under warranty because there is no heat tape around the cooktop cutout. The metal foil heat tape is a requirement around cooktops. No matter who the manufacturer of the countertop material is, if there is not any heat tape then no company will cover the repair under their warranty.




There are also not any corner blocks in the corners of the cutout, although I forgot to take a picture showing the absence of the block. The corner blocks serve the purpose of strengthening the corners and helping to prevent cracks from developing. The absence of these blocks will in most cases cause your warranty to be null and void. Since this is the responsibility of the countertop fabricator and not the homeowner, some companies will opt to pay for the repair and then back charge the fabricator. This is up to each company to decide how to proceed with these types of situations.


I made the repair and it came beautifully, as we knew it would. After making the repair we also made a slightly larger radius in the corner which helps to dissapate (did I spell that right?) the heat from the corner a little more. In addition, we also added the corner block to this affected corner to beef it up a little bit and make it less likely to crack in the future.



Finally, we added the required heat tape and reinstalled the cooktop and called it a day. The homeowner could not believe that there was not trace of a repair ever being made. That is how it is supposed to be when a repair is made. As long as we have dye lot match material, which we did on this one, then that is the way it will always be.

IF YOU NEED SOLID SURFACE OR STONE COUNTERTOP REPAIR AND YOU LIVE IN NORTH CAROLINA CLICK HERE!

IF YOU NEED SOLID SURFACE OR STONE COUNTERTOP REPAIR AND YOU DON'T LIVE IN NORTH CAROLINA CLICK HERE!

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Crock Pot Use. More Bad Info.

Another crack brought to you by a Crock Pot.

It's not unusual for me to be told that a homeowner thought that they could put a crock pot or any other hot thing on their solid surface countertop. I know that when I was just getting into the countertop business back in 1993, there were some salespeople that actually thought that was true. Since they thought that it was true they passed that information along to consumers. Needless to say, that came back to bite a lot of kitchen and bath bath people in the backside.

It also exposed the fact that while solid surface countertops are high quality, durable, and can enhance any area that they are used in, they are not now nor have they ever been indestructable. They are not now and have never been advertised as such by any of the actual manufacturers. Dupont is the pioneer of solid surface with Corian®, and I can promise you that even though the myth of indestructableness is widespread, Dupont never put it out there. In fact they have always tried very hard to be sure it was marketed properly.

I was just cruising around through some stats and seeing what links people used to find my blog and website. I found this forum that is sure to drum up some work for us solid surface repair specialists. This thread is titled Crockpot Use.


Things like this forum and other do it yourself type message boards give out bad information about what these countertops can and cannot take. Another thing that goes around is that you can't use crock pots on solid surface but that you can use them on stone countertops. Not true. Even stone countertops can and do crack from using Crock pots directly on them. I've even heard people say, "I have used my Crock Pot on all my countertops with no problem." To them I say, "You have been very lucky." Some people have cracked their countertop with the first use of a Crock pot directly on the countertop.

I really wanted to get on that forum and join the discussion but not enough to pay the $5.00 fee to join. Anyway, maybe I will get lucky and all the people that are taking the advice that this forum is dishing out will be North Carolina residents and then I can fix their countertops for them.

Just so you know, I'm not sharing this information about crock pots so that I can knock myself or any other countert top repair specialists out of work, I just want to share things that you should already know, but probably do not know.

IF YOU NEED SOLID SURFACE OR STONE COUNTERTOP REPAIR AND YOU LIVE IN NORTH CAROLINA CLICK HERE!

IF YOU NEED SOLID SURFACE OR STONE COUNTERTOP REPAIR AND YOU DON'T LIVE IN NORTH CAROLINA CLICK HERE!

Learn to lay tile in 6 days with these simple to follow videos!