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kitchen appliance | The difference between an integrated appliance & a hidden kitchen appliance
As
if deciding upon your kitchen style and design doesn’t give you a big headache,
you will also have to decide on the pros and cons of either keeping your
existing appliances, buying new ‘stand alone’ kitchen appliances, or buying
integrated ones. Many customers don’t take time in analyzing which appliance will be right.
Many
factors need to be taken into consideration. On this occasion, we’ll be looking
at appliances that typically are situated close to a water supply – appliances
such as washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers. Figure 8 shows
a typical example of a customer wanting to integrate a non-integrated
appliance. In this situation, an appliance is a washing machine, but it
could have just as easily have been something else. To ‘hide’ a
non-integrated kitchen appliance in such a scenario, it’s necessary to use
a slightly deeper worktop. A washing machine needs some ‘breathing space’
at the back. In order to have the doors flush with the finish
of the worktop at the front and an adequate gap at the rear, the depth of the
worktop needs to be extended by at least 50mm. This means that if encountering
a situation where the wall for this particular part of the kitchen only allows
for a 600mm depth, then the whole row of cupboards and appliances will have to
‘stick out’ very slightly. This can again be seen in figure 8.
As
most machines are very nearly 600mm wide when enclosing such an appliance
kitchen companies will generally allow for a 700mm space – 50mm clear at either
side. When attaching the doors, a 300 and 400mm door is used – not the most
symmetrical look, but more importantly taking up an additional 100mm of space
in the ‘kitchen run’ without good reason.
When
space is at a premium, a 100mm waste in the ‘run’ might just well have a significant impact upon the design.
Figure
9 shows another alternative for the same part of the kitchen. This
time, we are using a fully integrated washer. Integrated kitchen appliances
are completely different from non-integrated ones.
As
a generalization, one of the main differences is the ventilation supply.
For
non-integrated appliances, the cooling ventilation can be found at the rear,
whilst with the integrated version it can be found behind a vent in the kitchen
plinth.
This
significant appliance design alteration allows both cupboards in the kitchen as
well as the worktop to be positioned right next to it. The alternative in figure
9 enables yet another amendment to the overall kitchen design. As can
be seen in figure 8, there is only room for a 400mm base unit to
the right-hand side of the appliance.
Many
kitchen companies don’t make drawers in a 400mm width – they only have a 500mm
option. Therefore, if there’s going to be a hidden non-integrated kitchen
appliance in this particular run, then there won’t be enough room to have a
handy set of drawers nearby to the sink. The important thing to remember is
that one small seemingly insignificant change in the kitchen design could result
in a vast change in the efficiency of the overall final package.
