Gas Stoves and Indoor Pollution

[gizmo]

Very interesting John about efficiency changes over time, and modern stoves being all about looking stylish rather than good to cook on.
I have a brand new Australian made Westinghouse gas stove.
It wasn't cheap - cost $1500.
we bought it because our 1980s Modern Maid gas stove was rusting in some dangerous places - the griller (broiler) burner and the oven cavity. It had been a great stove but parts haven't been available for over 20 years. (the company went broke.) The Modern Maid was still lovely to cook on.

I am still getting the hang of the Westinghouse and two things you said above really ring true for this new stove.

1. The insulation of the oven is really terrible. The oven door is all glass, it is two sheets of glass with only the hinge mounts between them, fully open at top and bottom so the oven door acts as a chimney. It adds a lot of heat to the room and heats up the control knobs. Also the rear wall of the oven has no insulation at all, just an air gap between the the enamelled steel back wall of the oven and the galvanized back of the stove. The installer noticed the lack of insulation and we queried it with the manufacturer, they said that they no longer fit it. (sides, top and bottom are insulated, not the back.) It is still available as a spare part for earlier versions so I bought a back wall insulation panel and will fit it when the warranty expires.

2. The top burners annoy me as they seem to be too big - too many shoppers have been watching all the cooking shows on TV and want giant burners like commercial cookers. Real cooks want burners that can go down LOW when needed, but these don't go quite low enough. I have had to adapt my cooking, and often have to bring the pot up to temp on a larger burner, then move the pot to the tiny burner to get a simmer. The Modern Maid stove had a much wider range of flame on each burner.

 

[rp2813]

I've always preferred gas for a stove top and electric for roasting and baking.  We had a 1990 JennAir dual fuel range at the first home we owned, and I loved that system.  The electric convection oven was brilliant at baking and roasting.  We replaced it with a newer JennAir range that was all gas (Dave's decision, and he was the cook), and that thing would immediately give me breathing trouble when the oven was pre-heating.  I had to exit the kitchen when the oven was in use.  I hated it.  Fortunately, we sold the house within a few months of buying that stove. 

 

So, I do believe what they say about the toxic nature of cooking with gas, but I think it depends on the stove and the tuning of the burners, both on the cooktop as well as the oven.  Ideally, I'd like to replace the current OTR microwave with fan that stupidly blows the exhaust out into the kitchen, and have a vent put into the original flue/chimney for a real exhaust hood system.

 

I agree that electric cooktops are cleaner, and I like the idea of pot and pan handles that aren't too hot to the touch, but the infinite flame adjustment and instant on/off of gas is something you just can't match with the average electric burner. 

 

[mattl]

The thing I like about my gas cooktop is the layout.  The burners are set in a diamond pattern

 

      X

X          X

      x

 

The unit on the left is 19,000 BTU, right is 12,000Btu, top middle is 9,000 Btu and the smaller front unit is 5,000 btu.  This way I have a full range of heats to accommodate anything I'm cooking. The smallest burner gets the most use.  It's a 30" unit so large pans can crowd the middle burners  but it's a minor inconvenience.  It has full grates so sliding a pot from one burner to another is simple, if I had room for a 36" unit this would be an ideal setup for me.

 

[ea56]

Much value is put on the infinite control of a gas flame and instant on and off of the heat.  It’s true that you need to adjust to taking into consideration of the residual heat  of an electric stove top burner. However, it really take very little time to get used to this.  In some ways its not different than cooking on an old fashioned wood stove in the respect of using residual heat.  Its just what you get used to.

 

Eddie

 

[DADoES]

5K BTU Air Conditioning

 
I don't know if it's true but I've heard-said that 12K BTU of cooling is needed to handle the load of a residential gas range/oven.

Granny always had gas.  She had a 12K window unit in the kitchen for some years.  It could not handle the load when we had family gatherings or she baked batches of pastries in the summer.  Kitchen temp reached very uncomfortable to near-intolerable.  Later 18K and then 16K did better but the temp still increased noticeably.

The parents had gas for their first three years, electric ever since.  I've never had a house with gas so my only experience with it was at the grandmother's.

 

[bradfordwhite]

Major baking indoors

That's why I have an oven outside in the screen porch.  It can also go in a garage, or just outside on a table depending on where one is.

 

I'm using the oven roughly every other day.  Nearly everything gets cooked outside of the homes thermal envelope that way all the heat, cooking smells, humidity, and any possible sooting or burning just floats away.  One isn't adding to your homes Air conditioning burden and you don't have to deal with increased humidity or odors. 

 

When the timer you've set inside goes off, just grab a mit and go retrieve the item from the oven.

 

Interesting enough, I've even set my oven outside a window and cooked chicken when it was 10 degrees in Minnesota.  Works just as well.

 

Why anyone would choose to have an expensive 250 lb. block of steel stuck in their kitchen they can't move about to cook in or on when they can have a couple of small inexpensive, appliances they can easily lift, change out at will, and move to desirable locations... I have no idea.

 

Old habits are both a blessing and a curse especially when better technology arrives.

 

I got my stove top for $14 new.  The inside oven I found at a resale shop for $4 unused and it only gets used for nachoes or quick warm. 

The one I use outside where most baking happens I paid $3 for at a pay by the pound shop and it was hardly used and needed a switch. 

I fixed it and it works great now.

Both are full size you can get a pizza or bake a cake in them.  

 

 

 

[ozzie908]

Sadly as I age

So has my tolerance for heat diminished so after using gas for most of my life I am more than happy to have Induction cooktop its quick easy to clean and doesn't waste heat around the sides of the pan or warm me up while stood in front of it. Not so sure about the ones under the granite top I have cracked mine with a pan from the oven so not so heat proof as they want us to believe.

Austin

 

[sudsmaster]

The real problem with modern gas burners is that they are of the "sealed" design. This means they don't get any air flow from below, and consequently the flame blooms out much farther than in an old range. ?The modern style uses less vertical room, so the oven can be that much bigger, but it sacrifices burner performance, IMHO. Give me an old O'Keefe and Merritt or Wedgewood gas stove over a modern sealed burner contraption any day.

 

[tolivac]

Digging to install gas or for that matter other pipelines.Enter the Horizontal Directional Drilling machine!!!It can make the pilot bore for the line.At the other end of the line run-a backbore bit is fitted along with a pull line for the flexible line-water or gas-even sewer.Then the drill machine backbores to accomidate the pipe and pulls the pipe back to the drill machine.Connect up----YOUR done!!No trenching or digging other than a small pit for the entrance and exit for the new line.Simple backhoe or compact excavator job along with the drill and a reel of the pipe.The process is fascinating to watch!Done with water lines in my area,and new TV,data,phone lines,too.

 

[stan]

This stove is not curantly vented

I do have the ability to vent the oven, but hate the ugly vent pipe.
I'm kinda with Keith though..I keep a toaster/convection oven out on a back porch, along with a bread toaster. If I fry chicken.. It's in a electric fry pan outside with paper around it to catch any grease splatter. This is not because I don't like my stove.. It's because I don't like the cooking smell lingering.
(Unless it's a sweet potato pie baking in the fall of the year)
And during the hot days, I really think twice about lighting this thing up due to the heat it puts out.
By the same token..when it's cold, it's the best for heating up the rooms.
So yes, gas throws out a lot of heat by comparasion. (At least this old girl does)
I do have a carbon monoxide detector nearby, but nothing has set it off.
Including the old gas floor furnace. (But there is some soot I clean up in the spring from the furnace in the spring)
I had no idea how much I'm polluting the air in the house!

 

[stan]

This stove is not curantly vented

I do have the ability to vent the oven, but hate the ugly vent pipe.
I'm kinda with Keith though..I keep a toaster/convection oven out on a back porch, along with a bread toaster. If I fry chicken.. It's in a electric fry pan outside with paper around it to catch any grease splatter. This is not because I don't like my stove.. It's because I don't like the cooking smell lingering.
(Unless it's a sweet potato pie baking in the fall of the year)
And during the hot days, I really think twice about lighting this thing up due to the heat it puts out.
By the same token..when it's cold, it's the best for heating up the rooms.
So yes, gas throws out a lot of heat by comparasion. (At least this old girl does)
I do have a carbon monoxide detector nearby, but nothing has set it off.
Including the old gas floor furnace. (But there is some soot I clean up in the spring from the furnace in the spring)
I had no idea how much I'm polluting the air in the house!

 

[ozzie908]

@stan

What a beautiful home you have it reminds me of a TV set its just perfect.

Now I have to ask is there any way you could put like a skirt under that cupboard that's above the stove and install a fan/vent in the cupboard so you cannot see it which would remove any odours and heat from the cooking area I am sure it could be done in such a way that it would be unseen?

Austin

 

[tomturbomatic]

Reply #46

Points for using "contraption."

 

[sudsmaster]

https://www.thedrive.com/news/28420...n-fire-randomly-and-theres-no-recall-in-sight

 

[sudsmaster]

When I bought this house in '97, it had zero gas cooking appliances. It has two kitchens, one on the enclosed patio. Both with electric ovens/ranges. The main change I made was to replace the aged, discolored slow Corning glass top cooktop in the main kitchen with a Frigidaire Gallery "Gas on Glass" cook top. Also had the electric GE dryer replaced with a gas unit that I brought with me. Had to have gas lines extended to these locations. The water heater (in a closet in the enclosed patio) and the main house heat (forced air) were already gas. The oven in the main kitchen is a GE P*7 wall oven. It works well enough.

The gas cooktop has a very functional, if loud, range hood over it. But normally I only use the hood if I'm cooking something that might stink up the house.

Oh, and I have CO detectors all over the living quarters. Never had one go off.

After a few years I got a propane fired Virco stainless grill/rotisserie for the outer covered patio area. This is where I do most of my roasting/grilling.

The electric range in the enclosed patio is a vintage drop-in Frigidaire Compact 30. It runs OK although the timer is busted. I don't believe I've ever run the oven on that. I picked up a Modern Maid slide-in gas range that with some mods to the countertop could replace the Compact 30. But I'd have to extend a gas line to that location, which I've put off doing. Since I rarely cook on the Compact 30 I'm in no particular hurry to replace it.

I grew up with gas ranges. In older flats/homes the range ovens would be vented through a pipe to outdoors. Newer installations would not be vented, and I was given to believe that improvements in the quality of natural gas as delivered by PG&E made such venting unnecessary.

Indoor air quality can be problematic even without any gas cooking appliances. Perhaps what many tightly sealed homes need today are fresh air heat exchangers, which can admit fresh relatively unpolluted air into the living quarters while minimizing loss of heat (or cooling).

 

[sudsmaster]

<blockquote>
<h5 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 14px 0px 8px; font-size: 16px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">[COLOR=#000000; font-size: 14pt]Electrical fire facts[/COLOR]</h5>
[COLOR=#000000; font-size: 14pt] [/COLOR]

<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 12px 0px 24px; list-style-position: outside; padding-left: 24px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 400;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 8px 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;">In 2014-2018, electrical distribution or lighting equipment, such as wiring, lighting, cords, and plugs, was involved in an estimated average of roughly 34,000 (10%) reported home structure fires per year. These incidents caused an average of 470 (18%) civilian deaths, 1,100 civilian injuries (10%), and $1.4 billion (19%) in direct property damage annually.</span></li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 8px 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;">Electrical distribution or lighting equipment ranked first in direct property damage, and third among the major fire causes in the number of home fires, fourth in home fire deaths, and tied for third in home fire injuries. </span></li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 8px 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;">Wiring and related equipment accounted for 7 percent of all home fires and nine percent of all home fire deaths.</span></li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 8px 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000000; font-size: 14pt;">Cords or plugs were involved in only one percent of home fires but seven percent of the deaths. Extension cords dominated the cord or plug category.</span></li>
</ul>
[COLOR=#000000; font-size: 14pt] [/COLOR]

</blockquote>

https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/Top-fire-causes/Electrical

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

What about the Japanese restaurants that cook on a hibachi on front of you? Those are also gas and turned down right before and after your food gets prepared, there is ventilation above that...

Which is why I like gas for keeping my coffee pot warm, except for the titter-titter the flame makes on my new range, whereas the old one burned silent, so as long as someone is in the house, or I know I will have more coffee, or if not, then turn it off, it’s better than an electric’s lowest that will generate heat that will still cook it or the residual heat after it’s turned off will still dissipate right when I’m ready for that next cup...

— Dave

 

[fan-of-fans]

Wave of the future?

I think induction is the wave of the future in stove-top cooking. It took 30+ years to develop and get the manufacturing costs down, but they are getting more common.

I think the time is coming where we will see more induction cooktop ranges than radiant glass, in lineups of household ranges.

Induction is also moving into commercial kitchens slowly. I'm seeing stock pot ranges in quite a few commercial kitchens on websites that are induction.

Speed in heating/cooling down I think are the reasons gas has been so popular in the commercial kitchens. If the same thing can be done without an open flame and no need for a gas supply, dealing with pilot lights, and hard to clean burners, I don't see why induction won't continue to become more popular. The big thing I see is durability in a commercial setting but I think that is no longer an issue, with plenty of commercial manufacturers producing them.

 

[eronie]

I LOVE my Frigidaire induction range!
The only thing I don't like about induction cooking is when a pot boils over it doesn't make a sound! But the mess is easy to clean up, as the glass doesn't burn the boilover.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I first saw induction in 1971 at a home show in Atlanta and it was by Westinghouse.

As for it catching on slowly, in commercial kitchens in Europe it is already a big thing. Fagor has been a big manufacturer of induction cooking equipment. It might be moving more slowly here but that is because we have had better electric cooking surface units than Europe which was stuck with those damn cast iron plates for decades and then the glass radiant units for a long time.