Quick answer
A drawer runner is not a generic part. Pull it out, find the brand and the number stamped into the steel, then match six things: the system (Blum TANDEM, Blum MOVENTO, Hettich Quadro, Hettich Actro and so on), nominal length in millimetres, load class in kilograms, handing, drawer-side thickness and cabinet-side thickness. None of them cross over — a Blum runner will not carry a Hettich drawer box, and a 40 kg and a 70 kg runner of the same nominal length are different order lines. If the drawer still glides but has started slamming, the runner is usually fine: the damping has died. On current Blum and Hettich undermount runners that damping is sealed into the runner body, so the runner is the part you buy. On a cabinet door the damper is a separate clip-on unit costing a fraction of that. Work out which of the two you are looking at before you spend anything.
Key points
- Runners are sold by nominal length, not by your drawer's size — on Hettich's Quadro YOU the drawer is the nominal length minus 10 mm and the cabinet needs it plus 3 mm.
- Load class is a separate axis from length: Hettich's Actro 5D comes in 10 kg, 40 kg and 70 kg versions, and not every length exists in every class.
- Left and right are different parts, and even the cabinet side changes the order number — Hettich lists the same 470 mm Quadro V6 separately for 16 mm and 18 mm sides.
- A soft-close drawer that slams has lost its damping, not its rollers, and because BLUMOTION and Silent System are integrated into the runner body, the runner is what you replace.
- Blum New Zealand's warranty can decline where the fault was not advised within 30 days of you noticing it, and it puts the removal and reinstallation labour on your kitchen maker.
Six things must match before a runner will fit.
The drawer under the hob in a Manukau rental has dropped on one side and catches on the door below. The tenant has been lifting it closed for a month. It reads like a fifteen-minute job: pull the runner out, take it to a trade counter, buy the same thing. That is where it stops. There is no shelf of generic runners. You are holding one part out of a proprietary system, and nobody can help you until you can say which system, which length, which load class and which hand.
This is about the concealed undermount runners under a normal residential drawer — the ones you never see until something goes wrong. Most Auckland kitchens built this century run Blum or Hettich, with Grass, Salice and a tail of unbranded imports filling in the rest. The diagnosis below applies to all of them. The part numbers do not, and that is the point. If the front is the problem rather than the mechanism, that is a different repair — worth reading when a door swap beats a full replacement first.
Nominal length is not the length of anything you can measure
Runners are sold by nominal length, or NL — a system reference rather than a dimension you can take off the drawer with a tape. Hettich spells it out for Quadro YOU: drawer length equals nominal length minus 10 mm, and the cabinet needs nominal length plus 3 mm of clear depth. A 500 mm Quadro is a 490 mm drawer in a carcass with 503 mm of room. Measure the drawer, order a 490, and nothing you receive fits anything you own.
The steps are fixed. Blum's TANDEM full extension is catalogued at 250, 270, 300, 320, 350, 380, 400, 420, 450, 480, 500, 520, 550 and 600 mm; Hettich's Actro 5D runs 250 to 750 mm on a similar ladder. There is no 470 and no 530 in the TANDEM list. If your cabinet depth sits between two rungs, the original maker picked a rung and worked around it — one of the quieter reasons standard carcass sizes exist.
Load class is a separate axis from length
The second variable catches people who got the length right. Hettich's Actro 5D is published in three load classes — XS at 10 kg, L at 40 kg, XL at 70 kg, rated to EN 15338 Level 3. They are not options you tick; they are different runners that share a nominal length. The classes do not span the ladder either: on Hettich's own sheet the 250 mm comes in 10 kg and 40 kg only, the 580 mm in 70 kg only. Blum's TANDEM 560H is a 30 kg runner; the heavy-duty 569H was the 50 kg option, and that line has largely given way to MOVENTO, so a like-for-like reorder on an older kitchen is not guaranteed — worth a call to Blum New Zealand rather than an assumption. Guess the class upward and a cutlery drawer closes like a bank vault; guess downward and you have built the next failure. A pot drawer is not a 30 kg drawer once the cast iron is in it, which is why storage decisions that actually get used drive the hardware spec rather than the reverse.
| System | Load classes (kg) | Nominal lengths (mm) | Soft-close damping | If the damping dies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blum TANDEM 560H | 30 | 250–600 | BLUMOTION, integrated | New runner |
| Blum TANDEM 569H (heavy duty) | 50 | Longer lengths only | BLUMOTION, integrated | New runner — line largely superseded by MOVENTO |
| Blum MOVENTO | 40 / 60 / 70 | Varies by load class | BLUMOTION or BLUMOTION S, integrated | New runner |
| Blum LEGRABOX (box system) | Up to 70 | 450–750 | BLUMOTION, integrated | New runner — box and runner are one system |
| Blum TANDEMBOX antaro (box system) | 30 / 65 | Varies by load class | BLUMOTION, integrated | New runner — box and runner are one system |
| Hettich Quadro YOU | Up to 30 | 300–600 | Silent System, integrated | New runner |
| Hettich Actro 5D | 10 / 40 / 70 | 250–750 | Silent System, integrated | New runner |
| Cabinet door hinge (Blum, Hettich) | n/a | n/a | Clip-on damper unit | Usually just the damper |
Handing, drawer sides, and the cabinet you screw into
Runners come handed. Left and right are mirrored parts with different order numbers — obvious until someone orders two of the same and finds out with the drawer on the bench. Drawer-side thickness is next: Actro 5D and Quadro YOU both take wooden drawers up to 16 mm side profile, and Blum's TANDEM catalogue calls for 11–16 mm panel thickness. If your sides are 18 mm because someone built them from whatever was on the rack, a runner designed for 16 mm will not engage properly however well you drill it.
Then the one nobody expects: the cabinet side. Hettich lists the same 470 mm Quadro V6 Silent System — same 30 kg, same hand — under different order numbers depending on whether it goes into a 16 mm cabinet side or an 18 mm one, EB 12.5 versus EB 10.5. Length, load, hand and drawer side can all be right and the part still be wrong, because of the carcass it bolts to. Which is why the detail that keeps soft-close drawers off the callback list is specification discipline rather than anything clever on site.
A door damper unclips. A drawer damper is sealed in.
What goes wrong
The failure people report and the failure that happened are usually different. A drawer that slams is the classic. The owner assumes the runner is worn out after eight years. It almost never is — the bearings and the steel are the durable half, and Blum tests box and runner systems to as many as 100,000 opening movements. What has gone is the damping: a hydraulic component with a finite life and strong opinions about temperature and load.
Before you accept that verdict, empty the drawer and close it. If it soft-closes empty and slams full, the damper is healthy and the drawer is over its load class — nothing fixes that except a heavier runner or less cargo. Then check the drawer is seated on its locking devices and run the adjustments. Hettich's Actro gives tool-less height adjustment of +3/−1 mm, side and radial adjustment of ±1.5 mm each, and tilt up to +4 mm before you have touched a part. A surprising share of alignment complaints are a knocked adjustment, not a failure.
Then the quiet killer, and it sits in Blum New Zealand's own maintenance statement rather than in any forum. Storing open cleaning products, dishwasher products, baking powder or table salt in a cabinet corrodes metal surfaces through the fumes alone. The cupboard under the sink is where every Auckland household keeps exactly those things, and it is the cabinet whose hardware fails first. Blum also warns off steam cleaners, acetone, chlorine, cellulose thinner and anything starting with tri or tetra. Damp cloth, then dry cloth — the whole approved routine, and what keeps hardware working for the life of the kitchen.
| Symptom | Usually | Sometimes | Do this first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slams instead of soft-closing | Damping unit worn out | Drawer loaded past its class | Empty it and test — if it soft-closes empty, it is overloaded, not broken |
| Front sits low, drops one side | Not seated on the locking device, or height adjustment knocked | Runner bent by a fall or overload | Re-seat, then use the tool-less height and tilt adjustment |
| Will not close the last 20 mm | Something inside fouling the carcass back | Damper seized | Pull the drawer right out and look into the cabinet |
| Gritty, notchy travel | Grit or grease in the bearings | Corrosion from products stored in the cabinet | Damp cloth only — no solvents, no steam cleaner |
| Front out of line with its neighbour | Adjustment, not failure | Carcass out of square | Check the cabinet is square before blaming the runner |
Most of the runner callbacks I go to, the runner is fine. Twenty kilos of cast iron in a thirty-kilo drawer, the cabinet racked half a degree, and the damper has been fighting both for three years. Square the box first. Then we talk about parts.
Should you do it yourself?
If the drawer is a straight undermount on a square cabinet and you have identified the exact part — yes. Modern runners are slide-on and the adjustments are tool-less by design; it is twenty minutes once the right box is in your hand. The hard part was never the labour. It was the identification.
Do not, if the cabinet is out of square, if the drawer is a box system such as LEGRABOX or TANDEMBOX where sides and runners are one engineered assembly, or if a whole kitchen of hardware is tired. One drawer is a repair. Fourteen is a refit. For rentals the maths changes again: a portfolio doing this drawer by drawer as tenants complain spends more than one coordinated pass, which is the argument for planned portfolio maintenance over a stream of callouts.
What to have in hand before you ring anyone
- A photo of the runner out of the cabinet, both faces, with any stamped numbers legible — it answers more than any description will.
- The brand mark. Blum and Hettich both mark their steel; no mark usually means an unbranded import, which is a measuring job rather than a lookup.
- The nominal length if printed, or the measured runner length and internal cabinet depth if not. Handing too: left, right or a pair.
- Drawer-side thickness in millimetres, and cabinet-side thickness, because 16 mm and 18 mm can be different part numbers.
- What the drawer carries, and whether it slams, drags, drops or binds — and whether it still does it empty.
- The rough age of the kitchen and who built it: two years old is a warranty conversation, fifteen is a parts-availability one.
Frequently asked questions
Can I put Blum runners in a drawer that had Hettich, or the other way around?
Not as a swap. Undermount runners engage the drawer box through system-specific locking devices and cut-outs in the base and back, and that geometry differs between manufacturers. Changing brand means modifying or rebuilding the drawer box to suit the new system. If you have Blum now, source Blum — the part is trivial next to the cost of remaking a drawer.
My soft-close drawer slams. Is there a damper I can buy on its own?
On a current Blum or Hettich undermount drawer runner, no — BLUMOTION and Silent System are integrated into the runner body, so the runner is the replacement part. On a cabinet door it is the opposite: the damper is a clip-on unit that comes off without tools and costs a fraction of a hinge. If someone told you to buy a drawer damper, check they were not describing a door. Either way, empty the drawer and test it first — an overloaded drawer slams with a perfectly healthy damper.
How do I work out the nominal length if nothing is printed on the runner?
Measure the runner and the clear internal depth of the cabinet, then match to the ladder for that system rather than assuming a number. Hettich publishes the relationship for Quadro YOU: drawer length is nominal length minus 10 mm, and the cabinet needs nominal length plus 3 mm. Blum's TANDEM steps run 250 through 600 mm in fixed increments, so your answer is one of those and not something in between. Send the measurements and a photo to a trade supplier to confirm.
The kitchen is only three years old. Who pays?
Start with the business that sold you the kitchen, not the hardware brand. Consumer Protection is clear that the Consumer Guarantees Act applies regardless of any manufacturer warranty, that a business cannot limit its obligations to the warranty terms, and that goods must last a reasonable time. Separately, Blum New Zealand expects a fault to be advised within 30 days of being noticed, and puts the removal and reinstallation labour on your kitchen maker. Report it promptly and in writing either way.
Why do the drawers under my sink fail before the rest of the kitchen?
Almost certainly what is stored in there. Blum New Zealand's maintenance statement warns that storing open cleaning products, dishwasher products, baking powder or table salt causes corrosion on metal surfaces from the fumes alone, and the under-sink cabinet is where those things live in most houses. Move them into a sealed container or another cabinet, and clean the hardware with a damp cloth followed by a dry one. It is free, and it is the cheapest thing you can do for the whole kitchen.
If it is more than one drawer, send us the scope
One dropped drawer in a Grey Lynn villa is a repair you can probably do yourself once you know what to order. A Papakura rental where four drawers slam, two drag and the hob drawer has given up is not a parts problem — it is a decision about maintaining a kitchen or replacing one, and that turns on the doors and carcasses rather than the hardware. We do maintenance as well as new kitchens. It is in the name, and it means we have no reason to talk you into the bigger job.
Send through the unit count and a rough scope — phone photos are fine, a plan sharpens it — and you will get a trade-priced number back inside 24 hours, plus GST. We manufacture in our own workshop in East Tamaki and supply and install under one contract and one invoice, so there is no showroom margin on top and no gap between who made it and who fits it. If it turns out you need one runner and a conversation, we will tell you that too.