I think my range is on the way out.....decisions decisions

[Deephaven]

That's great with new igniters and a perfectly clean burner, but generally that just isn't the case it'll hold.  No way mine will stay lit that low without thinking it is out and constantly firing the igniter.  They eat igniters though as I replace multiple a year.

 

I am going with the Wolf.  The 4 bridge elements for a large griddle is really cool and then main turbo burner is significantly hotter than the bluestar which I can overwhelm easily.  It also simmers much lower and easily.

 

The driving force to switch is two fold.   A somewhat simple meal will turn my 70f kitchen into an 80-85f in the summer and the grease propagation from the heat is seriously insane.  I have a ventahood and it is basically useless.  Perhaps a large 1600cfm vent would deal better but even then the amount of residue you'd have to clean out of the vent is awful.

 

Cooking wise though compared to any other gas stove the blue star is brilliant.  I've tried the rest and if it weren't for a "no heat" technology I would not be switching 

[gfweb]

On 11/1/2023 at 12:39 AM, paulraphael said:

 

What induction cooktop did you settle on?

 

With the bluestar simmer, are you sure it can't just be adjusted lower? I haven't heard this complaint before. Here's a how-to.

 

I adjusted the simmer and its fine esp with a diffuser for tiny pots

[paulraphael]

On 11/2/2023 at 3:45 AM, Deephaven said:

The driving force to switch is two fold.   A somewhat simple meal will turn my 70f kitchen into an 80-85f in the summer and the grease propagation from the heat is seriously insane.  I have a ventahood and it is basically useless.  Perhaps a large 1600cfm vent would deal better but even then the amount of residue you'd have to clean out of the vent is awful.

Ventahoods are fundamentally useless; the technology doesn't work. I'd suggest looking up threads on Houz (formerly Garden Web). There are couple of engineers who post there who have cracked the code on hoods, and explain pretty well how and why most consumer hoods fail. The answers have more to do with creating a large boxed-in space above the range ("capture area") than with cfm. But also, standard restaurant-style baffles do the job for removing grease as long there's adequate air speed going over them. The centrifugal ventahood method is a mess. 

 

Edited to add: I've been planning a kitchen renovation for a year now; the hardest part (besides coming up with the money) has been figuring out how to get decent ventilation. The consumer options are mostly terrible. And it's hard to find a commercial installer who will talk to a homeowner. The best solutions I've seen are by people who hired an HVAC engineer and had a custom installation, but I'm hoping not to spend my life savings on a vent.

Edited November 14, 2023 by paulraphael (log)

[Deephaven]

Thanks. My plan is currently to use a Pyramid Prestige 42" x 24" baffle type over a 36" induction with an external 1400 Abbaka fan.  For make up air I plan to have it piped in to a couple vents in the kicks right below my feet in the cabinets.  This will hopefully allow me to not have heated make up air as I don't plan on having it on high all that often, but when I do kick in the makeup air.

[gfweb]

I have an outdoor vented ventahood which does a stellar job on anything from the range as well as a cigar smoked nearby.  Don't know the CFM but I remember I got it overpowered.

 

Make up air is easy from a big fireplace in the kitchen

Edited November 14, 2023 by gfweb (log)

[Deephaven]

24 minutes ago, gfweb said:

I have an outdoor vented ventahood which does a stellar job on anything from the range as well as a cigar smoked nearby.  Don't know the CFM but I remember I got it overpowered.

 

Make up air is easy from a big fireplace in the kitchen

Careful.  Make up air is not easy.

A 2000 sq ft house (185m2) with standard ceilings has 16,000 cubic feet of air.  If a fan pulls 1400 cubic feet out a minute it means in a little over 10 minutes all of the air in the house will have to be "made up" or you will have a pressure drop.  A passive opening to allow that is huge and much larger than a fireplace.  We are going to use a 12" (30cm) tube with a large fan to push air into the house.  My initial make up air bid was over $15000 which is why I am doing it on my own and differently...

 

Ventahoods I think are only up to 600cfm.  I can easily overwhelm our ventahood with my Bluestar.  It can't even come close to keeping up.

[paulraphael]

Any decent hood can handle smoke. Most domestic hoods have a hard time with plumes of atomized grease. Then there's the problem with what happens to the grease after it's ingested. The centrifugal theory used by ventahood works poorly in practice and makes a mess. The standard restaurant-style baffles can work well if there's enough air flow (in linear feet per minute ... cfm by itself won't tell you enough here). 

[Deephaven]

And NOTHING is harder to clean than the ventahood fan.  Mine need it monthly and they are disgusting.