Installing Kitchen Sink

[blt]

Hi All
We've finally located a new kitchen sink that fits in our existing cutout (a saga in itself) and I was just wondering if you should run a bead of silicon under the edge of the sink before you put it it?
The new sink has a rubbery strip around it's underside - do you still silicon under that, onto the bench?
Also, it doesn't appear to come with any clips.... how are they normally fixed into place?
Thanks for any advice!

[journeyman Mick]

blt,
the supplied rubber seal should be okay, but I usually run a thin bead of silicone as well. There should be clips supplied to pull it down onto the seal. If you can't get or fit any then I would drop the sink into place and mark the outline with a pencil on the benchtop. Remove the sink and mask off 2mm outside the line. Apply a very generous bead of sealant, drop the sink into place and weight down with bags of sand, cement, boxes of nails, cast iron cooking pots, housebricks - whatever, as long as you can get the rim to seat well. Then carefully remove any excess sealant and peel off the masking tape.

Mick

[blt]

Thanks very much for that Mick! Something to keep me busy tomorrow :)

[hotboost]

Yep I do the same where you done the cutout on the bench top run a small bead . Once you pull the sink in tight , wipe any excess silicone with this stuff called no more silicone ,its in a red can by a compnay named redback . You can get it from most plumbing and tile shops.

job done

[arose62]

Went through this a few weeks ago :D
I reckon sink manufacturers go from "square corners" to "big radius corners" and back about, say, every average sink lifetime. You can only cut the sink hole bigger so many times ...

The plumber mate who helped out was very pleased to see the cheap-n-nasty toilet paper in the place (sheets in a box, not on a roll), as he reckons it's the best stuff for cleaning up the silicone squeeze-out.

It certainly did the best clean-up I've seen.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Jacksin]

For silicone 'squeeze out clean-ups' I find the easiest method by far is to give the silicone a very light spray with dishwashing liquid (about the same strength for dishes) and using an icecream stick run along the join removing the excess from the stick regularly. To finish up, a spray on the finger and a light wipe over to even out any odd spots. I use this for re-sealing shower recesses etc because the rounded end on the stick leaves a nice radius on the silicone.



A tiler showed me this way and I can assure you it is a hell of a lot quicker than masking up like the home reno blokes on TV recommend.
Jack

[blt]

Thanks everyone for your input.
On closer inspection the sink clips were cleverly hidden under the sink in a huge wad of 5cm thick sticky tape - so that'll let me get away with a bit less silicon. Once I manage to extricate them from the tape.
I also have to agree with Jack regarding silicon 'cleanup' (if such a thing is possible!). The dishwashing liquid spray works like magic - we recently discovered that and also used it for our shower. No more clumps/ragged edges!


I reckon sink manufacturers go from "square corners" to "big radius corners" and back about, say, every average sink lifetime. You can only cut the sink hole bigger so many times ...
Absolutely true. At the moment they're transitioning back to square (lucky for us). Also the "standard" sizes seem to change regularly as well, just to complicate things even more. Maybe they have secret deals with cabinet makers - keep messing around with sizes so everyone has to replace their benchtops too. The replacement sink is pretty much the biggest you can get, so this'll have to be IT!