We upgraded to BLUM soft close mechanism on all our kitchen and laundry cupboards but at our Practical Completion Inspection realised it wasn't yet installed and we only had standard Blum hinges, so it was added list of items to amend.

I checked the house today and it seems that on some of the cupboards they have installed both top and bottom hinges with the Clip top mechanism, but on other cupboards it is only on the top hinges (and not the bottom which only has the standard hinge). Is this correct? The actual 'soft close' seems to work fine on all cupboards, but I can't find the pattern of why some have both and others just the top? ie. lower cupboards in kitchen only have top hinges, but lower cupboards in laundry have top and bottom...

We paid close to $900 for soft close drawers and cupboards, so I want to know if our builder is trying to save on his costs and rip me off in the process, or if there is a valid reason for this?

Read through the BLUM specs but it doesn't say, and I'm yet to contact BLUM, as they only open Mon-Fri.

Thanks for any insight you can share.

They are sold in pairs.

To me your cabinet makers cheaped out. Then again i paid a lot more for mine...

Mine are all soft close and they're definately cliptop on all hinges. Then again i made sure of it as i established a good relationship with our manufacturer away from the builder.

Thanks for the info - I'll be chasing this up on Monday now knowing that they're sold in pairs and really should be installed on the entire door.

Btw your build looks great!

The Blum clip on soft close piston units are relatively inexpensive.

Our pantry doors (2360mm high with 5 hinges) work well with two soft close units per door and the kitchen sink cupboard (720mm high with 2 hinges) have one unit per door. Adding more soft close units results in annoyingly slow closing doors.

Are the hinges that don't have soft close units still Blum?

The number of soft close depends on the size of the doors from what I've observed; larger doors have more, smaller ones just one per side (seems to be 1m in our case). The Hettich ones seems to be the least obvious, being built into the hinge, but you need soft close hinges from the start.

do they have soft closing on corner bifold hinge door as well?. it got soft closing on all the doors except corner bifold hinge doors

The clip on soft close dampers are sold on a per unit basis and are relatively inexpensive - you could buy them over the counter for about $4 a unit.

As already mentioned they do not need to be put on every hinge - it depends on not only the height of the door but also the width, as the damper is working against the total mass of the door.
Are your laundry floor unit doors wider than the kitchen doors?
A rule of thumb is that any door only needs one damper per two hinges...maybe they had some left over...

Clip on dampers are now also available for 180 degree hinges such as those used in corner cupboards but not for the actual bifold hinge used in the middle of the two doors.

Cheers,

Earl

Umm no there not. They are sold indivually and are quite cheap.

The number required is based on the length and width of the door. Most base cabinets and overhead doors only need one.

Blum have just released new hinges with softclose built in.

anyone know where to buy these products? thanks.

Most cabinet makers would sell them to you.

I used to have 2 dampers on each 300mm lower cupboard door but found the doors were closing too slowly so I took one damper off.



Ikea sells them. http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/80126213/ (sorry can't find the link on their Australian website)

I got soft closing on all the doors except on biforld corner ones. does anyone know if soft closing can be fitted on bifold corner cabinet doors as well.

Thanks for the advice everyone
The hinges that don't have the mechanism are still Blum and the laundry doors are a similar size to the kitchen cupboard doors.

I contacted BLUM and the rep confirmed:
- yes it does depend on the size of the door. If it seems to be soft closing okay with one clip top mechanism, then it's doing it's job.
- too many of the soft close hinges can make it close too slow
- in our case where our builder charged this as an upgrade, he said to ensure I receive the total number of hinges with the mechanism installed because that's what I've paid for, and then I can remove them at my discretion.

Think about how a bi-fold works. How do you reckon you could fit soft close to something that 'complex'

but i don't like the bang noise bifold door makes while all the other cabinets are quite.

do they have clip on bluemotion thingy for corner hinges? i can only locate that soft close mechanism for standard hinge....

By corner I gather you mean a bi-fold, where you have two doors hinged together with one door also hinged to the cabinet. In which case see the discussion above.

If it isn't clear why there isn't a mechanism think about how a bi-fold door works. In particular it is two totally seperate hinge mechanisims that have no link to each other. Also the hinge that holds the two doors together does not hold the door at 90' like a normal door, rather the hinge will be from 180-270'.

It all makes it very hard to have a simple closing mechanism like on a normal single door that closes 90' to the cabinet.

I guess you can try using two different types of dampers, one for the door that's attached to the cabinet ,like "Strumer" said you can get clip on dampers for that door:



For the second door you may need a damper on the cabinet, not the clip-on type. Maybe something like these:
http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/20172378/

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But I think it'd be quite annoying since you'll have to wait for the first door to close slowly then the second door (you'll need a lot of patience!), maybe just the one for the second door should be enough.


Another way is to have two separate doors for the corner but it's not very common:

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I would agree, I don't think a soft close mechanism would really serve it's purpose on a corner cupboard and dampers might do the trick... give 'Blum' a call though, they're pretty helpful in giving advice.

Good news - the missing soft close mechanisms were replaced!
All that fuss for such tiny objects - building a house changes people!

I have these blum soft closer types for sale here:

http://www.thecableconnection.com.au/Other--Non-related

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