Kitchen Worktop damage

[Barney78]

At the weekend the air inlet valve on my boiler decided to become a water outlet valve. On Easter Sunday. In the middle of the night.

I have since had the boiler fixed but it spent a good 8 hours dripping water on to my kitchen surface, which made its way down the join between two runs of laminate worktop. The join is covered by a metal bead.

Despite me sealing the cut edge with PVA during fitting both pieces of surface have swollen up, is there anything i can do short of replacing 5 metres of worktop?

 

[Trazor]

Unfortunately PVA is a water based product, and will dissolve upon to much contact with water.

You should seal all cut worktop edges by smearing with silicon.

Sadly it is not possible to repair the damage...

 

[Barney78]

is there any chance it will at least shrink back to size when its dried out? The annoying thing is that the piece of surface with the non cut edge has swollen too.

Could i not try and clamp it to squeeze it back together again? The laminate itself is still intact, the majority of the swelling seems to be underneath.

Maybe i should just ring our house insurance company...

 

[Scrit]

Is there any chance it will at least shrink back to size when its dried out? The annoying thing is that the piece of surface with the non cut edge has swollen too.

The term we use to describe chipboard which has been soaked is "blown". Very apt as it sums things up well. Once swolen it stays that way

Could I not try and clamp it to squeeze it back together again?

The presses used to make chipboard start with a die full of material and resin some 6 ft or so thick and compress that down to 40mm under hundreds of tonnes of hydraulic pressure. I somehow think you'll have difficulty reproducing that sort of pressure..........

Maybe I should just ring our house insurance company...

Good idea!

Scrit

 

[des_enzano]

I've been asked to replace a worktop that suffered the same kind of damage. However, in this case it is two worktops running parallel with and butted to each other so as to make up a wide enough top to fit into a window recess ( it's in an old tenement flat). I was thinking about glueing the two worktops together but uncertain of which type of glue would prevent future water ingress to the joint.
Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Scrit]

I was thinking about glueing the two worktops together but uncertain of which type of glue would prevent future water ingress to the joint.

You're best bet, assuming you can make a near perfectly straight joint on each side would be a urea formaldehyde or resorcinol formaldehyde glue, however if you don't have RF or UF why not just use exterior grade PVA with a good bead of silicone along the top of the cut edges and pull the joint together using worktop fasteners?

Scrit

 

[des_enzano]

Thanks Scrit,

I see that Urea Formaldehide is marketed under the name Humbrol Cascamite/Extramite so I might go for that.

Thanks again.

 

[Scrit]

Yep, that's the stuff. Wear gloves when handling it - a few people are sensitive to the powder on their skin.

Scrit