All of us are guilty of trying to maximize the amount of “stuff” we jam into kitchen pullout drawers, after all it’s only human nature. This is OK if the “stuff” is ligh in weight but if the “stuff” is heavy, there are a couple of engineering principles to think about when using your kitchen pullout shelves.
Kitchen Pullout Drawers Test results
1. When you extend kitchen pullout drawers out, the pullout drawer acts like a lever. Think of the lever as a teeter-totter. The pivot point is the front of your cabinet shelf. One seat is the back of your cabinet shelf while the other seat is the front of your kitchen pullout shelf. When extended, if you have 50 lbs in your kitchen pullout drawers then there is 50 lbs. pulling up on the back attachment point to the cabinet walls or the back of a cabinet shelf.
2. There is more than one way a kitchen pullout drawers can fail. We have tested our kitchen pullout shelves when extended to 100 lbs. In that test, the kitchen pullout shelf was screwed into a new sheet of 3/4”plywood. On other tests that were screwed into actual under cabinet drawers (melamine), the drawer failed around 70 lbs. becaus it pulled plugs of wood out of the back 2 base screw holes or it pulled the secured ‘L’ bracket shelf screws out. So, what failed was the base shelf or the back of the cabinet not the kitchen pullout shelves.
Thus, we recommend loading kitchen pullout drawers to no more than about 40-50 lbs.
A heavy weight in a kitchen pullout shelf is similar to having someone toss that weight at you. Imagine someone from 3’ away throwing a 50 lb bag of flour toward you. That is the energy involved.
Now you know, kitchen pullout shelves can fail in several ways. But, no matter how they fail you are on the receiving end of that weight and you don’t want to be in that position. Simply avoid loading any single kitchen pullout shelves to more than about 40-50 lbs. Spread the weight around and re-organize your heavy items to not overload any one kitchen pullout drawers to maintain an orderly drawer and avoid shelf damage.
This is a pre assembled pullout drawer. Learn how to measure for a pullout drawer.
Learn how to measure for sliding shelves now.