900 Litres of Pantry Capacity Reached with Kesseböhmer Tandem Pull-Out Larder Frames

A 600mm carcass fitted with a tall Kesseböhmer Tandem larder in the Dispensa or Convoy family carries several basket levels on the door-fixed outer chassis, with a second set of baskets on the inner pull-out frame. At the 2140mm frame height, the paired arrangement is what makes the difference against a plain shelved larder: two moving faces of basket storage instead of a single fixed column that buries its own rear.

A single pull-out frame in the same cabinet holds far less, because everything at the back still has to be reached through one moving column. The door-mounted outer frame is what roughly doubles the accessible face, and it is also the part most people forget to account for when they compare a tandem larder against stacked drawers.

How the staged pull-out creates access

The outer frame is fixed to the door and moves the instant the door is pulled. The inner frame stays put inside the cabinet for the first part of the travel. Once the door-mounted frame has cleared enough room, the inner chassis rolls forward on its own runners and brings the rear baskets out into view.

In a plain fixed-shelf larder, goods at the rear tend to stay buried behind the front row. Here the rear baskets simply travel out to meet the user.

The synchronised pull-out mechanism comes with the frame, though the timing hinges on the position of the trigger cam on the inner frame runner. A poorly built cabinet opening changes the relationship between the two moving frames. If the opening is out of square by more than about 2mm across its width, the inner frame can start travelling too early.

When it does, the rear baskets move toward the door baskets before the path between them is clear. The whole assembly then binds at roughly two-thirds extension. Installers usually feel it as a heavy pull ending in a hard stop, even with the runners screwed into the correct holes.

So the carcass has to be squared before the larder frame goes in. With the doors off, a 600mm by 2140mm tall unit should be measured diagonal to diagonal, and both diagonals should agree within about 1.5mm. Holding that keeps the runner alignment close to the geometry the tandem mechanism assumes.

Fitters who set these frames often clamp a temporary diagonal batten across the carcass while fixing. The batten only comes off after the frame has been screwed home and cycled ten times without catching. That repeated cycling earns its keep, because a frame that runs sweetly empty can start binding once the door weight and the moving baskets settle into the cabinet.

Load adds its own demand at this height. A fully stocked tall larder of this type can carry 60 to 70kg across all its levels. The base runner and top guide share that weight, and the top fixing into the cabinet top panel is usually the weak point. An 18mm chipboard top panel is a poor anchor for small guide screws if the door gets slammed day after day. A doubled top rail, or a 25mm panel at the fixing point, gives the top guide something to bite into and stops the frame racking after a year of use.

Why the basket width sits around 462mm

A 600mm cabinet never yields a 600mm basket opening. The carcass sides eat 32mm, the door-mounted chassis needs running clearance down both sides, and the inner chassis needs its own gap so it can slide past the outer frame without touching.

Add those clearances up and the standard Kesseböhmer tandem basket for a 600mm cabinet lands at a nominal width of around 462mm. The common ordering mistake is to treat a 600mm larder cabinet as though it will swallow 500mm-class baskets. On the first pull, baskets that wide catch on the door frame.

Depth carries much of the storage. In a 500mm-deep carcass, the basket rails leave roughly 470mm of usable depth. Because the tandem mechanism splits that depth over two moving frames, goods never have to sit dead against the rear panel. A fixed-shelf larder of the same outside size can look generous on a drawing while leaving the back 150mm of every shelf awkward to reach, often meaning the front row has to come out first. The tandem layout converts that rear strip into moving basket space, and that conversion is most of its advantage over a conventional tall larder.

Basket side depth also governs what the frame carries cleanly. Wire baskets at the 462mm nominal width typically run 90 to 130mm deep at the sides, tall enough to hold jars and tins steady during travel yet low enough to see across the levels.

Basket liners

Wire mesh lets small items slip through and lets jars creep during the pull cycle. A cut-to-size PET liner, or the Kesseböhmer anti-slip mat dropped into each basket, usually kills the rattle that owners complain about soon after fitting.

Getting the runners set true

Accurate runner setting is where most of these installs are won or lost. The runner holes have to be drilled to a tight tolerance, and the base runner and top guide have to run parallel through the full stroke. If the pair sits out of true, the two frames stop meeting cleanly at the handover point where the inner chassis takes over from the outer one.

The practical check is the same one used on the carcass itself: square first, then parallel, then cycle. A frame drilled off a squared carcass and cycled under something close to its working weight will show any bind before the baskets are ever loaded with tins.

One thing the frame’s own specification does not tell you is whether the cabinet delivered to site is actually built square and stiff enough to hold that geometry once the door and a full load of baskets are hanging off it. That is the measurement worth taking before the first basket goes in.