When the answer wasn't bigger pipes — it was a custom plinth.
A central London basement kitchen with level pipework that couldn't be modified — and combi ovens that kept flooding. The fix came out of our fabrication shop.
Pipework that couldn't be moved.
The kitchen sat in the basement of an old central London building, served by waste pipework that ran level along the wall — no fall, no drop. Every cleaning cycle, the discharge would partially backflush into the combi cabinets.
The result was a pattern of recurring failures: drain pump faults, water sitting where it shouldn't, and on the worst days, full electrical floods of the lower components. Engineers had attended over months, replacing parts each time. The parts weren't the problem.
Modifying the pipework wasn't an option. The building's age, the kitchen's basement geometry, and the constraints of central London plumbing routing meant structural changes were off the table. Whatever the fix was, it had to work with what was there.
One inch of lift. Custom-fabricated.
If the pipework couldn't drop, the ovens had to rise. Our fabrication team designed a bespoke stainless plinth to sit beneath the stacked combi pair, raising them by approximately one inch — enough to give the existing waste run a workable fall back to the drain.
The plinth was made in our Walsoken facility from food-grade stainless, with a diamond-plate top surface for grip. Serviceability was built in from the start: the front face hinges down, allowing the ovens to be slid forward for engineer access without disturbing the install.
A small piece of engineering, but the kind of fix that only comes out of having a fabrication shop on the same site as the service team.
Two hours of their time. None of yours.
The install ran as a coordinated joint visit with a professional kitchen cleaning contractor. While our engineers de-installed the existing combis, the cleaners stripped and degreased the area behind and under the original pipework — months of accumulated grease, silt and residue from the recurring leaks.
The plinth was levelled, the combis re-stacked on top, and the waste connections re-made with the new fall in place. New copper feed runs were dressed cleanly around the install.
Two hours, start to finish. The ovens were back on for cook-off, no service disruption.
The kitchen has been running clean ever since.
Months of recurring breakdowns ended in a two-hour install before the kitchen opened for the day. The bespoke plinth solved the constraint that no off-the-shelf part could — and because it was made by us, on the same site as the service team that fitted it, the lead time on the fabrication wasn't an obstacle.
Got a similar challenge?
Send us the brief. If there's an engineered way through, we'll find it — and if there isn't, we'll tell you that too.