VivreManger

Has anyone any experience with the quality of post-sale service offered by different hood/vent manufacturers? I have seen very little discussion of this issue. Before I buy a big-ticket item I like to establish what the local service is. Normally I contact the manufacturer and get the name and number of the authorized service representative. Over several weeks I have tried to get this information about Independent Independent Inc. 3663 Barron Way Reno, NV 89511 775-358-0263 Toll-Free: 800-7-NEVADA 1-800-763-8232, Fax Number: 775-358-0288 independent@kitchenhood.com Sales manager: Gary L. Schnepel Sales Manager cell 775.343.8123 fax 831.303.4349 gschnepel@kitchenhood.com www.kitchenhood.com Despite multiple phone conversations and email exchanges and despite their claims that they would provide the information, they have failed. Finally I made one last effort and they said they would no longer discuss the matter with me directly and instead I must deal with their so-called "local" sales representative who is located about 200 miles away. The sales representative then sent me this statement: "Independent will pay reasonable service claims to any qualified servicer for warranty work. However, in the off chance you will need work done; a quick call to the factory to let them know of the problem would be wise. You might have a minor problem that you could fix yourself, or they will be able to tell the technician what is needed." This policy seems reasonable, but it would have saved a lot of bother, if they had shared it initially. There still remain the problems of who defines "qualified" and how to contact a factory when they failed to respond to my simple inquiry. Bottom lines: How finicky are hoods? How likely are there to be service problems? What is Independent's track record?

I have added the Capital Precision to the mix that had previously included the DCS RDT-305. Number and Specs for the Capital are: GSCR305 • 30" Gas w/ Four Burners + Integrated Wok, Self-Clean Oven with rotisserie. The best price I have seen on-line is $4845 (list is $6292). from Wholesale Restaurant Supply 3814 Charlotte Avenue Nashville, TN 37209 Anyone have any dealing with them? The Capital is a bit more expensive than the DCS model I am considering. The main advantage is that it has a built-in wok burner at 25,000 btu and the four other burners can reach 19,000. In addition it has a rotisserie feature. Anyone know this range?

Roughly, from quiet conversation up to light automotive traffic. ← More specifically I wanted to distinguish between dB and sone. What precisely does each of these terms mean? What is the derivation of the term? Normally I see sone on kitchen stove exhaust hoods, I had not seen dB before. Apparently there is no standard objective procedure or body rating these numbers so each manufacturer is free to make their own claims. Furthermore there are multiple sources of noise. One is the exhaust blower itself. Second is the air passing through the entire apparatus. Lastly there is the presence or absence of sound-controlling design and materials. I have been having trouble locating dealers who actually carry the models that have the features I seek. So I am even more reliant on the printed claims.

On paper the Spagna Vetro hoods seem a steal for under $500 particularly since they claim to deliver 900 CFM. http://www.euro-kitchen.com/proddetail.asp?prod=SV218B2%2D30 They are stylishly designed, though they are not that deep and lack a large capture area. The depth of the hood is about 20", less than an ideal of about 30" that would cover an entire range top. I do not remember how to read noise levels, the website offers the following, whatever that means: Noise Level (dB / sone) Approximately 23 / 0.3 to 68 / 7.0 (Lowest to highest Speed). Anyone knows what that means? The bottom line however is reliability. Does anyone have any experience with them? What is the reputation of the company that distributes them? - - Euro-Kitchen, Inc. 2341 Industrial Parkway West Hayward, CA 94545 http://www.euro-kitchen.com/products.asp?cat=27

After going through various options in our kitchen to be (familiar to those who have been following this thread), we are considering yet another option: dcs 30 inch dual fuel stove rdt-305 Any experience with this unit? How effective is the simmer setting? The center burner seems to be set lower at a lower level than the remaining four burners. Does that in any way overcome the inherent problem of it being sealed? I like the power of the five burner cook-top and my wife would like the fact that the oven is a self-cleaning electric. I do not like the fact that the burners are sealed, but there seems to be no cook-top that offers both sealed and unsealed. Unsealed strikes me as more effective for wok-cooking than offering a wok ring. The only advantage of sealing the burner is cleaning, as far as I can imagine. Blue Star is more powerful, but my wife won't go for anything that is not self-cleaning. There is a lot of peculiar jargon in this business. Why is a stove called a range? What is inherently slide-in or free-standing about one stove as opposed to another? Which has front controls and which has back controls?

Sorry not to have been contributing to this thread, but I have been travelling in Europe over the past week and only now do I have access to my account. The house is about thirty years old. We will doubtless be improving the insulation, but not to the point that would seal it up like a plastic bag. There is already a whole house fan and it does not create the chimney air pull that you describe so I think the kitchen fan will cause no air displacement problem. There is a large window a few feet from the stove so that should furnish enough air for displacement most of the time. But it is a question I have been considering.

We have been very happy with Vent-A-Hood (click). Ours does a nice job of controlling grease from a 6-burner BlueStar rangetop. I can't remember the price, but I think it was in the ballpark of your preferred limit. Vent-A-Hood controls grease with centrifugal force rather than a filter, so their hoods provide more exhaust for the same number of CFMs compared with most competing models. Not sure about availability of remote blowers, but the filterless design is relatively quiet. Good luck on your project. ← The problem with filterless hoods is that cleaning may be difficult. How do you clean yours?

We are looking for a wall-mounted hooded vent.to go over a 36" or 30" gas cook top, which can produce a bit less than 60,000 BTU. The unit must have capacity for at least 600 cfm, be at least 36" wide, have two to three halogen lamps, and have filters that are easily dishwasher cleaned. It should also not be too noisy. The hood will be vented straight up through the ceiling, through the attic, and the roof. The house is a one-story ranch, about 30 years old. At this moment I do not know the size of the existing duct work, but I would imagine it might be as small as 6" and would likely have to be replaced with 8" or 10" for the kind of unit I anticipate. As the heat of the cook-top suggests, I do a fair amount of wok cooking and steak searing as well as the occasional potato pancakes so the unit must be able to remove the grease, heat, and smell of high-energy oil-friendly cooking. I realize that an easily cleaned filter might reduce the effectiveness of the air exhaust, but I won't want to spend a lot of time and hassle cleaning. As for noise level, it seems one solution is to remove the fan motor from the kitchen. The two options are an in-line motor or external motor, mounted outside the house. In a New England winter, the external option won't work. So the best solution is an in-line motor, probably placed in the attic crawl space which would be roughly 6 to 10 feet above the cook-top. Since the other appliances right now are stainless, that would probably be the preference, but the appearance is not as important as the power, convenience, and reduced noise-level of the unit. As for the price I would like to keep it below $1,000, particularly since installation, if new duct work is needed will not be cheap. Bottom-line: who makes a 600 CFM wall-mounted 36" vent with good lighting, easy cleaning, with, probably an in-line motor, for under $1,000? And if you know of such a product how reliable is it?

Any recommendations for a single oven to go below a gas cooktop? The interior should be as wide as possible, but fit within a 30" space. It could be either gas or electric, but probably would be electric. It should be self-cleaning. Convection would be an advantage. Reliability is an absolute. We do some baking, a lot of roasting, and could certainly use the speed of the convection oven. We want to keep electronic controls to a minimum, preferring manual controls. Food warmer is not essential. Multiple and flexible racks are good. It is not clear that a heating element directly connected to the convection fan is necessarily good, but there should be an element on top an one on the bottom, possibly below the inner metal frame. A food warmer is clearly not needed. Ideally the price should be less than $1,000, but if the quality truly justifies it, we could go higher.

I spoke to an old friend who is an engineer who has a lot of personal kitchen design experience. He supervised the installation of two different kitchens in his own homes, though he has not had to deal with the specific heat problem of this thread. Along the lines of what has been recommended, he suggested the following solution: Take a 3" thick fiberglass matt, cover it with sheets of cement board and paint it with heat resistant paint to match the decor. Place that between the fridge and the cooking area. My own thinking has evolved a bit as well. Rather than placing the cook top between the electric range and the fridge, I think I would flip the two cooking units and place the range between the fridge and cook top. As far as heat goes, the oven of the range will generate less heat than the cook top, though it would be for more extended time. Balancing those two elements, it strikes me that the heat from the oven would be less of a problem than the heat from the cook top. The other consideration is that the existing hood ventilation duct work is now directly over the less heat and smell producing electric range. After swapping the range and the top, and instead placing the cook top directly at that spot the new hood and fan will work more efficiently than by adding an elbow and moving the intake over by a few feet. The proposed new more powerful (at least 600 cfm) exhaust system would still be able to remove and reduce the external ambient heat from the range, even though it would no longer be positioned directly over it. I am thinking of getting a 36" hood which would completely cover the 30" cooktop and have a 6" overhang for the range. The range cooktop will not normally be used except for benign simmering and hot tray purposes. ADDITION: It just struck me that in an ideal kitchen the exhaust fan would be even further away from the oven than I am proposing since one wants to maintain oven heat as consistently and efficiently as possible. Heating the internal oven space and than removing the external heat it generates with an exhaust fan does not make a lot of sense. Unfortunately I do not have the space or the money to wall mount an oven in a completely separate spot distant from the hood and the fridge. All of which is to suuggest that moving the oven a little further away from the hood is probably not a bad thing, though its beneficial effect in this case would probably be minimal.

Globe and Lion Peanut Oil is excellent. It is made in Hong Kong and actually tastes like peanuts. One time my local Asian store had run out and I tried another brand. It was lousy. Another Hong Kong brands that has been reliable is Amoy. California made Lee Kum Kee has been good as well.

I am planning to install a high BTU gas cook top between an existing electric glass top range and a fridge. The specs call for 12" between the cook top and the side walls. Most of the interfaces of the cook top cause no problem. On the left side, it would be next to the range top and would have more than three feet of open counter, beyond that. The rear wall has enough open space. The space above the top will have a vented hood around 30" or more above the cook top. The problem is on the right side, which would be about 4" from the fridge. Furthermore the right burners are stronger than the left burners. Rear right has a maximum of 9,000 BTU. Rear front has 12,000 BTU. Incidentally the center burner gets up to 18,000 BTU. The left side has 9,000 and 6,000, rear and front respectively. The hood will remove some of the heat, but 4" still is not 12". I have spoken to one house inspector and one contractor who have both assured me that it would be possible to install a heat resistant insulated barrier between the fridge and the burners, but I would like to know if anyone else has dealt with a similar problem and what are the pitfalls to avoid.

I just got off the phone with a dealer who told me that EuroChef in New York City now distributes (and manufactures??) them. Any experience with EuroChef?

The burner arrangement is not ideal, but having the hot spot in the middle does mean that spilling and splattering is less likely to land on the counter. Since I would still have access to the four burners on the glass top, the temporary loss of the back two burners is not as crucial. On the other hand, I have been trying to learn if Caldera is still in business. And if it is still in existence, it seems no longer to be in Stowe, VT. So far none of those Stowe-Waterbury phone numbers work. It may still be possible to buy the top, but it is not clear that there is now any manufacturer to back it up. Edited to add: Just checked with a dealer who did not have all the information, but he thought the company had been sold to another manufacturer, perhaps in New York. He believed that all warranties were still being honored.

Here is the Caldera discussion: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/...1138155637.html A.J. Madison has it for about $800. As it happens, their factory is located an easy few hours drive from where I live. As I recall you, Beanie, may have posted about the company in another thread. I am interested in learning more from someone who has cooked on it. TWO Additional Points. AJ Madison has gotten a lot of bad internet reviews for their products and customer service. Is Caldera still in business? I found two numbers for them on the web, (800) 725-7711 and (802) 253-3008. Neither worked. It may be too good to be true.

I now have the specs for the glass top range. It seems to be a discontinued Maytag model that was bought about a month ago from Home Depot. I say discontinued because I could not find it on the Maytag website. Has anyone any experience with Model MERH865RAS? It is described as a 30" freestanding electric range with convection. The Home Depot specs claim that it has a 5.3 cu. ft. capacity oven, the largest available?? I thought that the best convection ovens have a heating element attached to the fan to increase the temperature, but this model seems to lack that. The glass top has 5 elements including one for warming, according to one part of the website, but only 4 according to another. The specs appear in the following site: http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores...525295+10401019

The house we are planning to buy has a new Maytag electric range with a convection oven and a glass (UGH!!) cooktop over conventional coil elements. At this point we are are considering a number of options, but the most likely is keeping the range as is, but adding a 4 or 5 burner natural gas cook top next to it. I think there is enough space for both. The glass cooktop would then become working counter space most of the time and cooking space some of the time. What experience and recommendations do you have for high quality gas cooktops? I am willing to consider something in the $1,000 price range. Any strong feelings? Since the existing glass top will probably be adequate for simmering purposes, the main point of the gas top will be quick high heat cooking. Any strong feelings about DCA, Thermador, Viking etc.? Which of them have a five-burner 30" cook top? I do a lot of high temperature wok and cast-iron pan cooking, so I definitely need something that can deliver a powerful blast of heat. The induction alternative will disable a big part of the cookware I enjoy using. In the course of adding the cook-top we will also have to add powerful hood, probably in the 600 cfm range, but that is for another thread.

The house that we plan to buy has a new Maytag glass-topped range with a convection oven. I need to learn more about the oven itself, but based on my instincts and what I am learning here, I don't plan on using that glass cook-top. In the past whenever I have chanced to use one, I have hated it. The kitchen counter space is big enough so that it could accommodate a 36" gas cooktop. The glass topped range would then simply become more counter, most of the time. I do not yet know exactly what is under the glass, a propos Dougal's very useful comments. I doubt it is induction. And I hope it is not because I don't want to restrict my use of pots and pans. I have some very fine copper cookware. As for the other options: "'conventional' electric heaters beneath the glass -OR- 'radiant' rings (which you can see glowing) -OR- 'halogen' rings (which are 'glow' very brightly, and give fast heating but don't simmer very well)" I hope it is not halogen since if I ever used the glass cook top, it would be as a simmering warming surface. Is there anything else that a conventional heating element under glass is good for? The convection oven, assuming that is a good one, is definitely a plus.

I am hoping to move into a newly purchased house in a few months. I have a slab of marble about 3/4" thick, 4' 6" long and 16 1/2" wide. I don't know what kind of marble it is since I got it from my parents' house after they died. I wonder if marble has any special properties that would make it useful as part of a kitchen counter. It is not wide enough to provide an entire counter, but it could be placed as the outer segment of the existing counter which is now about 25" deep, but could be cut back to 9". I remember that Steve Herrold uses a marble slab as a mixing counter for adding candies and other smoosh-ins to ice cream, presumably because the marble retains the cold better than a conventional board. I don't do much pastry, but does it have advantages for rolling dough. How would it function as a cutting board in general? Any thoughts on a partial marble-topped counter in a kitchen?

I have eaten lunch at L'Ami Jean twice. Two couples I know well have eaten there, respectively twice and once. I don't know if this was an accident, but the consensus among these diners seems to be that lunch on Saturday is better than weekday lunch. The Saturday lunch I had was more relaxed, the amuse bouches more generous, and the overall quality of the food was superior. The base price was higher since there were fewer (perhaps none at all) prix fixe options, but the overall price-quality ratio was better on Saturday. I did enjoy my weekday lunch, but next time I can I would book the Saturday lunch. Unfortunately next month when I get to Paris I won't be there on Saturday. That said, I have no dinner information to share. Sorry, just noticed that your Saturday lunch slot is already booked, so my recommendation is for nought.

It certainly is high cost, which is not necessarily the same as high-quality. I was not necessarily making a judgment as to how good it is. The engineering and design issues are certainly worth some attention, either here or in another thread. Dave, would you care to expand on what specific applications reveal engineering and design problems? Did you have any examples in mind?

We are house-hunting. One of my strong preferences is to move to a house with natural gas, but some of the houses that may be attractive for other reasons may be too distant from gas lines. Propane is the proposed compromise, but from everything I have learned propane is inferior to natural gas and may be no better than an electric cook top. I have searched this forum for propane versus natural gas discussions and came up empty. Does propane yield fewer BTUs than natural gas? Can a high end stove such as Viking work as well on propane? Other than the inconvenience of filling the tanks are there any additional downsides to propane? Thanks

I will try vinegar solution first then charcoal. I don't use briquets, but I do have some hardwood charcoal, just waiting for the snow to melt. I should add that my earlier experiments included warming up a baked apple. It helped with the kitchen smells, but not the mocrowave.

We had used a vinegar solution to wash it, but this seems much more effective. Though I should add that burnt bread is more powerful and pervasive than any curry I have ever smelt. Would you suggest a half-vinegar half-water solution?

A few weeks ago someone left a piece of bread in the microwave too long and it got burnt. The bread is long gone, but the smell still lingers. I have washed the stove down with soap and baking soda, but the smell is still strong. My wife thinks that the oven is now toxic, but she never liked it in the first place. I put it out in the back porch with the door open and the smell persists. I put a plastic container of baking soda in the microwave and shut the door, but it seems to make no difference. Any suggestions??