good FYI. We are actually having an insulation guy come out MOnday to help better insulation that outside wall where the sink is. Brrrrrr!~

Even though we added insulation, I still find that items in the DW and drawers on the outside wall are cold this time of year! The trash is on that wall as well...so I guess it's a good thing for the trash, but it still is cold! (Personally, I think the entire house is under-insulated. We're trying to rectify that, but it takes time.)

I hadn't thought about the hot dish + cold sink issue, though...thanks for warning us!

Just had a thought...I think a sink grid might eliminate this risk...what do you think?

That is a very good tip. Wouldn't have thought about it and we get -40F! And since the reno 2 months ago, a very large window above the sink.

Thanks!

Oh, dear! I'm definitely living in the right place. I've had outside wall storage feel cold too, but I think my definition of "cold" may differ from y'all's. If my sink is ever cold enough to pop pyrex I'm moving closer to the equator!

Piaa, you better be careful...

This is a great tip. thank you. I would hate to break my dishes.

I wonder why there is no insulation on the outside
wall? Oh Wait, maybe this is an old house or maybe
down south? Is your home in a warm state?

In New England, Colorado, North Dakota, Michigan...
Northern States most homes have thick ugly itchy pink
fiberglass insulation on all outside walls. We had so much
insulation in my laundry rooms there was no circulation.
My DH had to repair and create air flow.

My sink is on an outside wall but I have never had this
problem. I will need to check it all out. Thanks again
for this tip.
~boxerpups

I didn't get a potfiller partly (mostly) because it would be on an outside wall, and prone to freezing pipes.

We have a sink grid buehl, and it still shattered. We had cooked bacon in the microwave using a standard Pyrex baking dish, and if I recall (I don't cook/eat bacon anymore), the baking dish used to get quite hot. The combination of the very hot glass and the cold metal was not a happy one.

It's become our habit to run hot water for a brief moment in the sink and/or over any cookware/bakeware/coffee carafe to level off the temps between the two before placing said items in the sink.

The walls were all opened to the studs during the reno. They either replaced the insulation, or added to it. The outside walls just get cold when it's cold outside (we're just north of NYC). Our dishes and glassware in the upper cabs along that wall are a bit chilly this time of year!

I just had to chime in here - I too have experienced exploding Pyrex, here in the southern state of Tennessee. In our case, it wasn't that the stainless steel sink was necessarily so cold (although the sink was on an outside wall and it was February), it was that the Pyrex was exceedingly hot. We had taken a pan of brownies out of the oven and set it on the stove top to cool a little. We turned a burner on to heat water for hot chocolate... but it was the wrong burner. It was the one right under the Pyrex dish. We started smelling a burning smell and realized what we had done. My friend grabbed the Pyrex and set it on the dividing partition of her sink and about 15 seconds later it exploded and that's not too strong a word. Glass flew in all directions to about 10 feet away. It's an absolute miracle that neither of us were hurt and my toes curl when I think that both our 7 yr old sons had passed through the kitchen only moments before. So it doesn't matter how the temperature difference is generated, if you thermally stress Pyrex past a certain point it's going to explode. In thinking about what we should have done, maybe setting it on a towel on the counter would have been better, or maybe not. Perhaps just turning the burner off and letting it cool slowly (albeit smoke-ily) would have been the thing to do. This was the same friend who a year before had overheated (boiled dry) a copper-clad saucepan on her stove. When she grabbed it to move it to her sink, molten metal (from between the copper cladding and the pan bottom) flew everywhere. Again, her son had JUST been underfoot in the kitchen. As it was, she burned holes in her hardwood floor. The moral of all this - don't distract this friend when she is in the kitchen!

Thanks for the tip. Wanted the sink on the outside wall to take advantage of view of woods. Have always let things cool down on top of the stove for at least an hour before placing in sink but not because I knew about the possibility of dish shattering-more laziness LOL!! We designed and had our house built back in 1978. With the blizzard of 77 just behind us and because we were building south of Buffalo, NY which can get fierce lake effect storms we had our builder put way more R value insulation than the DOE guidelines specified for our weather zone. Our builder also put a heating vent in the toe kick area right in front of the sink which made it nice washing dishes in the middle of winter!! Then I didn't have a dw. It paid off big time as my heating bills were half what my next door neighbor was paying. Back then kept the thermostat at 72. Good insulation pays for itself in the long run.

Thanks for that tip . . . I have a silgranit sink -- outside wall, well-insulated mid-Tennessee house, but it's supposed to get down to 9 tonight and snow tomorrow!! I always mix cold water in with draining water from spaghetti or whatever so the boiling water doesn't hit the sink . . . don't know if that's necessary or not, but I do it anyway! I always cool dishes on a towel or hotpad, but who knows when I'd absent-mindedly put one in the sink.

An awesome tip! thank you!

Btw... Karen and Hosta, since you are both in TN we should get in touch and do a TN TKO lunch!

Thanks for the tip. I'll keep that in mind when we reno-our sink is on the west wall-freezing and open to big winds.

Cindy . . . sounds great!!

Many people don't realize that even tempered glass can shatter as it ages, due to the minute scratches that accumulate on the surface over time. The weakening of the surface tension (glass always remains a liquid, even in its 'solid' state) makes it vulnerable to thermal shock, hence the shattering.

Glass shower enclosures have also been known to shatter spontaneously from the thermal shock of hot water hitting the glass if it's in a weakened state. By federal law shower glass, however, crumbles into rounded bits, rather than the usual glass shards.