Story of Varmint's Kitchen Renovation

[project]

Marlene:

"Start by re-reading this TDG article. Maximum Suck."

at

http://www.egullet.com/?pg=ARTICLE-davevent

Oh, boy. Will David Scantland soon hate me!

His article has:

"Can watts be converted to BTUs? Since they are both units of energy, yes (we'll skip over the explanation that energy output ought to be expressed as watt-hours or BTUs per hour, but never is)."

NO! A 'Watt' is NOT a unit of energy! A Watt is a unit of power, which is energy per unit time. Another common unit of power is horsepower, and one horsepower is 745.7 Watts. In particular, in physics the main unit of energy is the Joule, and the definition of a Watt is a Joule per second.

A 'Watt-second' would be a power level of a Watt continued for one second and, thus, would be a unit of energy, in particular, one Joule. Thus, a 'Watt-hour' would be 3600 Joules of energy.

Yes, a BTU (British thermal unit) is a unit of energy. Other units of energy include the Joule above and the calorie.

From my handy units conversion table on the back of my ancient circular slide rule (which I keep at hand in the case for my trusty HP-15C calculator), 1 BTU is 1055 Joules or 252 calories.

So, a power level of 1 BTU per hour would be a power level of 1055 Joules per hour or 1055/3600 Joules per second or 1055/3600 = 0.293 Watts. Or, a power level of one Watt is the same as 3600/1055 = 3.412 BTUs per hour.

The power of a 2500 Watt burner would be 2500*3.412 = 8530 BTUs per hour.

So the energy of 1000 Watt-hours or a one kilowatt-hour would be energy of 3600*1000/1055 = 3412 BTUs.

Oven Cleaning:

Of course it is possible to live without a self-cleaning oven or oven cleaning! It's easy: Simply decline to clean the oven! Just don't do it!

If there is really big spill in the oven, then, when the oven is cool, wipe up the worst of it. Otherwise, do nothing! Just let the ordinary oven heat burn the stuff and then just leave it there. It works great, for years! Twice I've had a self-cleaning oven: They're not worth it!

Besides, don't want a shiny oven! Instead, want an oven with a black surface so that can get the full effect of 'black body radiation'! So, see, there is a good reason from physics why we should not clean an oven!

The main risk is the 'kitchen police'! If they show up, show them your bottle of methylene chloride or sodium hydroxide oven cleaner, each with 100 pages of safety warnings and environmental restrictions, rubber gloves, safety goggles, full rubber chemical suit, and breathing apparatus, and say that you were just about to clean the oven as they arrived! Look really contrite! Better yet, don't let them in without a search warrant! If an in-law bends over and looks carefully at the interior of the oven, then run into them from behind hard enough to have them bump their head, and then be really sympathetic about how much their head must hurt!

Garbage Disposal:

I've had one and used it. They're noisy, hard on flatware and other small objects, but otherwise okay. Still there is an easy cost-free, environmentally-friendly, 100% energy-efficient, 100% all-natural alternative, a 'compost heap'! No, that's not the oven, the kitchen floor, or the kitchen trash receptacle! Instead, that's the patch of ground on the far side of a tree in the woods around the edge of the back yard! Also use it for weeds, shrubbery trimmings, etc.

Wine Cooler:

I don't get the point of a 'wine cooler': I keep my wine in the basement, bottles on their sides to keep the corks wet and airtight. If I want a bottle of wine to be really cool, then I get about eight pounds of ice cubes, a plastic bucket, and some water and submerge the bottle in ice water in the bucket. In about 30 minutes, have a really nicely cool bottle of wine!

Corner Kitchen Window:

The big window with the fused corner concerns me: For any rooms above and for the roof, there is no visible means of support except just the glass itself. Sure, some steel I-beams might be able to provide a solution, but such metal could be expensive.

Stove Hoods:

For hoods, in a home kitchen, I see no hope: If some cooking really needs a hood, then the hood will have to be very good not to put at risk the walls, woodwork, carpet, upholstery, draperies, books, paintings, electronics, piano, violin, etc.

For any cooking that would need a hood, I just step to the porch outside. Ah, the great outdoors!

When I was growing up, one neighbor put a roof over his outdoor brick BBQ set-up. That can work well, too.

In one apartment I had, there was a sliding door to isolate the kitchen from the rest and a nice window in the kitchen. So, in case of a lot of cooking that might deserve a hood, I just closed the door and opened the window.

House Insulation:

David Scantland's article is fully correct about houses being sealed up: It is possible to do some simple arithmetic to show that in a house that has well insulated walls, has good windows with minimal area and with heavy draperies over the windows, maybe with some help from awnings and trees, and has no air leaks, mostly don't have to heat the house in the winter because heat from people, lights, appliances, and what conducts from the basement floor and walls is enough until it gets really cold outside.

Further, letting in outside air costs a LOT: In the winter, first, have to heat the air. Second, have to add water to the air to get the humidity up to something reasonable, and, then, have to add heat for the enormous cooling effect of evaporating water into the air. Similarly, in the summer, have to cool the outside air and have to cool it enough to condense out enough water to keep the humidity comfortably low. The energy required for the evaporation, condensation of the water can amount to half of the total energy cost of the air leaks.

It is possible to use an air-to-air heat exchanger, but this thing can do nothing about the energy for the evaporation, condensation of water and in the summer might have water condensation in the input air flow and in the winter might have ice in the output air flow.

Further, while a small air leak can let in cold air in the winter and hot air in the summer, actually the energy cost of water vapor moving through such cracks can easily be higher than for the heat moved. That is, water vapor is really good at 'getting around'. This also means that a house with comfortable humidity in the winter can have problems with water vapor leaking through the thermal insulation and condensing on the interior surface of an outside vapor barrier.

Net, in a well insulated house, it is easy for over half of the heating/cooling cost to be from air leaks.

But a house that is nearly airtight has other problems: Undesirable or even dangerous gasses and odors can accumulate. One problem in some areas is radon gas which is radioactive. There have been claims that many materials -- plastics, finishes, fabrics, etc. -- used inside a house can slowly leak harmful gasses.

Kitchen Cabinets:

I fully agree with the idea of having open shelves covered with a door: Each time I've had a kitchen with a broom closet, I've used some plywood and a little carpentry to fill the closet with adjustable shelves. Fancy? No. Functional? Yes!

The idea that kitchen cabinets should be massive financial sacrifices to the oak, cherry, walnut, or mahogany furniture gods escapes me! Storage? Yes. Furniture? No!

In my 'dream kitchen', for 'kitchen cabinets' there is a room with a door, good lighting, and a lot of the now very popular NSF-approved chrome plated wire open shelves on wheels. To reorganize, just roll things around! If something breaks and makes a big mess, then roll the messy shelf outdoors and hose it off!

My compromise now is to have some of these shelves in my basement. I have some more in the garage, but they are for the cars and yard!

Refrigerators:

I believe that the situation for home refrigerators and freezers is a disaster. The prices per cubic foot are really high. Next, typically the home units could use better insulation and, thus, waste energy. Further, their compressors are noisy and, in the summer, provide heat that needs to be carried out for still more waste in energy. Bummer.

Actually, refrigeration is a fairly simple subject: For the volume we want to be cold, we build a well insulated box and put a door on it, well-insulated and airtight. For the cooling, someplace we have a compressor with a condenser. Then in the box we have an evaporator, a drain for condensation or defrosting, and a fan. We run a line for the working fluid from the condenser to the evaporator and an insulated line from the evaporator to the compressor. Important point: These lines need not be short! The noise and the energy are at the compressor and condenser; the evaporator and its fan are comparatively quiet.

So, the simple solution is to put the compressor and condenser someplace away from people, say, in the basement or outdoors. With a well designed compressor and evaporator, in the winter we should be able to get our cooling for nearly no cost in electricity -- in this case we might also insulate the indoors part of the line from the condenser to the evaporator. In the summer, the heat from the compressor is somewhere we do not try to cool; again we get energy savings.

There is some really effective and relatively inexpensive rigid foam insulation available. Thus, it should be possible to build a really well insulated box for much less cost per cubic foot than the usual home refrigerators. What we really want is volume in the refrigerated box, but for four times the cost in insulation we get eight times the volume! Net, in my 'dream kitchen', what I really want is refrigerator and freezer walk-ins!

Kitchen Floor:

While I'm willing to have a dirty oven, I do prefer to have a reasonably clean kitchen floor! To me, nearly all of the work in cleaning the floor is moving all the stuff on the floor -- kitchen table, kitchen chairs and stools, bookcases, free standing kitchen island work table, etc. So, in my 'dream kitchen' I would want essentially nothing on the floor to get in the way of floor cleaning! For floor cleaning, an industrial wet/dry vacuum cleaner is very effective but large and clumsy. So, it would be good to have a floor that could be flooded with rinse water. Then would want floor drains for the water and a rubber blade on a handle help push the water into the drains! Right: I'm just talking standard commercial kitchen design principles!

Good Kitchen Tool:

An especially good kitchen tool is a big 'industrial grade' wet/dry vacuum cleaner! Fast forgiveness for many sins!

Ah, for all these dreams, need money! Back to making money!

[Marlene]

Marlene:

"Start by re-reading this TDG article. Maximum Suck."

at

http://www.egullet.com/?pg=ARTICLE-davevent

Oh, boy. Will David Scantland soon hate me!

His article has:

"Can watts be converted to BTUs? Since they are both units of energy, yes (we'll skip over the explanation that energy output ought to be expressed as watt-hours or BTUs per hour, but never is)."

NO! A 'Watt' is NOT a unit of energy! A Watt is a unit of power, which is energy per unit time. Another common unit of power is horsepower, and one horsepower is 745.7 Watts. In particular, in physics the main unit of energy is the Joule, and the definition of a Watt is a Joule per second.

A 'Watt-second' would be a power level of a Watt continued for one second and, thus, would be a unit of energy, in particular, one Joule. Thus, a 'Watt-hour' would be 3600 Joules of energy.

Yes, a BTU (British thermal unit) is a unit of energy. Other units of energy include the Joule above and the calorie.

From my handy units conversion table on the back of my ancient circular slide rule (which I keep at hand in the case for my trusty HP-15C calculator), 1 BTU is 1055 Joules or 252 calories.

So, a power level of 1 BTU per hour would be a power level of 1055 Joules per hour or 1055/3600 Joules per second or 1055/3600 = 0.293 Watts. Or, a power level of one Watt is the same as 3600/1055 = 3.412 BTUs per hour.

The power of a 2500 Watt burner would be 2500*3.412 = 8530 BTUs per hour.

So the energy of 1000 Watt-hours or a one kilowatt-hour would be energy of 3600*1000/1055 = 3412 BTUs.

Oven Cleaning:

Of course it is possible to live without a self-cleaning oven or oven cleaning! It's easy: Simply decline to clean the oven! Just don't do it!

If there is really big spill in the oven, then, when the oven is cool, wipe up the worst of it. Otherwise, do nothing! Just let the ordinary oven heat burn the stuff and then just leave it there. It works great, for years! Twice I've had a self-cleaning oven: They're not worth it!

Besides, don't want a shiny oven! Instead, want an oven with a black surface so that can get the full effect of 'black body radiation'! So, see, there is a good reason from physics why we should not clean an oven!

The main risk is the 'kitchen police'! If they show up, show them your bottle of methylene chloride or sodium hydroxide oven cleaner, each with 100 pages of safety warnings and environmental restrictions, rubber gloves, safety goggles, full rubber chemical suit, and breathing apparatus, and say that you were just about to clean the oven as they arrived! Look really contrite! Better yet, don't let them in without a search warrant! If an in-law bends over and looks carefully at the interior of the oven, then run into them from behind hard enough to have them bump their head, and then be really sympathetic about how much their head must hurt!

Garbage Disposal:

I've had one and used it. They're noisy, hard on flatware and other small objects, but otherwise okay. Still there is an easy cost-free, environmentally-friendly, 100% energy-efficient, 100% all-natural alternative, a 'compost heap'! No, that's not the oven, the kitchen floor, or the kitchen trash receptacle! Instead, that's the patch of ground on the far side of a tree in the woods around the edge of the back yard! Also use it for weeds, shrubbery trimmings, etc.

Wine Cooler:

I don't get the point of a 'wine cooler': I keep my wine in the basement, bottles on their sides to keep the corks wet and airtight. If I want a bottle of wine to be really cool, then I get about eight pounds of ice cubes, a plastic bucket, and some water and submerge the bottle in ice water in the bucket. In about 30 minutes, have a really nicely cool bottle of wine!

Corner Kitchen Window:

The big window with the fused corner concerns me: For any rooms above and for the roof, there is no visible means of support except just the glass itself. Sure, some steel I-beams might be able to provide a solution, but such metal could be expensive.

Stove Hoods:

For hoods, in a home kitchen, I see no hope: If some cooking really needs a hood, then the hood will have to be very good not to put at risk the walls, woodwork, carpet, upholstery, draperies, books, paintings, electronics, piano, violin, etc.

For any cooking that would need a hood, I just step to the porch outside. Ah, the great outdoors!

When I was growing up, one neighbor put a roof over his outdoor brick BBQ set-up. That can work well, too.

In one apartment I had, there was a sliding door to isolate the kitchen from the rest and a nice window in the kitchen. So, in case of a lot of cooking that might deserve a hood, I just closed the door and opened the window.

House Insulation:

David Scantland's article is fully correct about houses being sealed up: It is possible to do some simple arithmetic to show that in a house that has well insulated walls, has good windows with minimal area and with heavy draperies over the windows, maybe with some help from awnings and trees, and has no air leaks, mostly don't have to heat the house in the winter because heat from people, lights, appliances, and what conducts from the basement floor and walls is enough until it gets really cold outside.

Further, letting in outside air costs a LOT: In the winter, first, have to heat the air. Second, have to add water to the air to get the humidity up to something reasonable, and, then, have to add heat for the enormous cooling effect of evaporating water into the air. Similarly, in the summer, have to cool the outside air and have to cool it enough to condense out enough water to keep the humidity comfortably low. The energy required for the evaporation, condensation of the water can amount to half of the total energy cost of the air leaks.

It is possible to use an air-to-air heat exchanger, but this thing can do nothing about the energy for the evaporation, condensation of water and in the summer might have water condensation in the input air flow and in the winter might have ice in the output air flow.

Further, while a small air leak can let in cold air in the winter and hot air in the summer, actually the energy cost of water vapor moving through such cracks can easily be higher than for the heat moved. That is, water vapor is really good at 'getting around'. This also means that a house with comfortable humidity in the winter can have problems with water vapor leaking through the thermal insulation and condensing on the interior surface of an outside vapor barrier.

Net, in a well insulated house, it is easy for over half of the heating/cooling cost to be from air leaks.

But a house that is nearly airtight has other problems: Undesirable or even dangerous gasses and odors can accumulate. One problem in some areas is radon gas which is radioactive. There have been claims that many materials -- plastics, finishes, fabrics, etc. -- used inside a house can slowly leak harmful gasses.

Kitchen Cabinets:

I fully agree with the idea of having open shelves covered with a door: Each time I've had a kitchen with a broom closet, I've used some plywood and a little carpentry to fill the closet with adjustable shelves. Fancy? No. Functional? Yes!

The idea that kitchen cabinets should be massive financial sacrifices to the oak, cherry, walnut, or mahogany furniture gods escapes me! Storage? Yes. Furniture? No!

In my 'dream kitchen', for 'kitchen cabinets' there is a room with a door, good lighting, and a lot of the now very popular NSF-approved chrome plated wire open shelves on wheels. To reorganize, just roll things around! If something breaks and makes a big mess, then roll the messy shelf outdoors and hose it off!

My compromise now is to have some of these shelves in my basement. I have some more in the garage, but they are for the cars and yard!

Refrigerators:

I believe that the situation for home refrigerators and freezers is a disaster. The prices per cubic foot are really high. Next, typically the home units could use better insulation and, thus, waste energy. Further, their compressors are noisy and, in the summer, provide heat that needs to be carried out for still more waste in energy. Bummer.

Actually, refrigeration is a fairly simple subject: For the volume we want to be cold, we build a well insulated box and put a door on it, well-insulated and airtight. For the cooling, someplace we have a compressor with a condenser. Then in the box we have an evaporator, a drain for condensation or defrosting, and a fan. We run a line for the working fluid from the condenser to the evaporator and an insulated line from the evaporator to the compressor. Important point: These lines need not be short! The noise and the energy are at the compressor and condenser; the evaporator and its fan are comparatively quiet.

So, the simple solution is to put the compressor and condenser someplace away from people, say, in the basement or outdoors. With a well designed compressor and evaporator, in the winter we should be able to get our cooling for nearly no cost in electricity -- in this case we might also insulate the indoors part of the line from the condenser to the evaporator. In the summer, the heat from the compressor is somewhere we do not try to cool; again we get energy savings.

There is some really effective and relatively inexpensive rigid foam insulation available. Thus, it should be possible to build a really well insulated box for much less cost per cubic foot than the usual home refrigerators. What we really want is volume in the refrigerated box, but for four times the cost in insulation we get eight times the volume! Net, in my 'dream kitchen', what I really want is refrigerator and freezer walk-ins!

Kitchen Floor:

While I'm willing to have a dirty oven, I do prefer to have a reasonably clean kitchen floor! To me, nearly all of the work in cleaning the floor is moving all the stuff on the floor -- kitchen table, kitchen chairs and stools, bookcases, free standing kitchen island work table, etc. So, in my 'dream kitchen' I would want essentially nothing on the floor to get in the way of floor cleaning! For floor cleaning, an industrial wet/dry vacuum cleaner is very effective but large and clumsy. So, it would be good to have a floor that could be flooded with rinse water. Then would want floor drains for the water and a rubber blade on a handle help push the water into the drains! Right: I'm just talking standard commercial kitchen design principles!

Good Kitchen Tool:

An especially good kitchen tool is a big 'industrial grade' wet/dry vacuum cleaner! Fast forgiveness for many sins!

Ah, for all these dreams, need money! Back to making money!

I'm sure there's a reason you directed me to this article, but for the life of me, I can't see what it is . I asked Dean about his electrical panel, because he seems to be adding additional electrical and his panel may be full/already overloaded etc.

[Varmint]

Wow, project -- what a thorough response. I'll just provide a few comments, as I'm not really trying to agree or disagree with your positions. I'll just comment on where we are:

Oven Cleaning: Good point. But I still want it fairly clean from time to time.

Disposal: We have no place for composting. Plus, we don't garden. Most importantly, we're slaves to our disposals. We've grown dependent on them, and I don't see that changing.

Wine fridge: Yeah, it's not necessary, but we've got it, it keeps the white wine at the temperature I like, and they're very helpful when you have a party (and I have a fair number of those).

Corner kitchen window. I misled people when I looked at the windows again this AM. The corner is indeed "fused" but there are vertical beams about 8 inches to either side of each corner. Anyhow, this window has been there for 30 years, so I'm not concerned with the area's structual integrity.

Hood: I need a good one. I've set off too many smoke alarms from searing a meat to be braised or cooking a steak. Simple enough.

House insulation: Our house is a veritable air sieve. I could have a full blown commercial hood, and we wouldn't have problems. Yeah, that's a scary thought, but it's true. Fortunately, living in North Carolina, we have pretty good weather much of the time such that the fresh air is quite welcome.

Cabinets: I'm still trying to get the "lay of the land" on cabinets. Now that I have a good working design, I can figure more things out. For instance, I may just have shelves under the cooktop for the storage of pots and pans. Everything need not have a door, particularly those areas that are highly utilized.

Fridge and Freezer: I have side by side SubZeros. They're old, but they're quiet and large.

Floor: The floor will come later. It will be patchwork for now, but we'll do something simple in the near future.

Marlene: as far as the circuit box is concerned, that's just one of 4 we have in the house. There's room for extra switches in each of them.

[Dave the Cook]

Now, can someone help me out with replacement lighting?

Varmint, can you give us a drawing with the present lighting layout, differentiated as to track and recessed cans? I'm sure there's expertise and experience here -- in a past life, I myself worked for a major lighting company.

[Dave the Cook]

Oh, boy. Will David Scantland soon hate me!

You need to get in line, Project! As I recall, I was taken to task for this error in the subsequent thread. Note, however, that we ended up at the same place: for cooking purposes, a 2500-watt electric burner is roughly equivalent to an 8500 BTU/hour gas burner, which was the point I was trying to make.

[Varmint]

Now, can someone help me out with replacement lighting? 

Varmint, can you give us a drawing with the present lighting layout, differentiated as to track and recessed cans? I'm sure there's expertise and experience here -- in a past life, I myself worked for a major lighting company.

You're pushing my limits on the lighting drawings, Dave. The only tracks are in the major cooking area: one track running from the marble slab to the cooktop and one track running in the narrow space between the eating bar and the cooktop/wall area. There are recessed cans (4?) in the cupboard above the eating bar -- that cupboard will come down, but the I-beam will remain. We'll probably box that in, being sure to run wiring out from it for the lights. Some cool surface mount halogen would look cool off of that. There are two can lights in the cupboard that sits above the right side of the marble slab. That cupboard is coming down, and I don't really want to cut holes into the ceiling for new recessed cans. In the hall towards the utility room are 3 recessed cans. In the hallway from the door to the grill are 2 recessed cans.

All lighting is currently incandescent. I'll likely move to halogen. I need to think about under cabinet lighting, but there won't be much of that. I probably want a light in the phone area of the bookcase at the end of the SubZeros.

The living and dining rooms are currently lit by old fashioned, track light cans. We'll replace those, too. I'd love to have something recessed there, but that's not critical right now. I'm a lighting ignoramus.

[Rachel Perlow]

To Do for latest drawing:

• Add yellow spots or whatever it indicate lighting
  Change bookcase color because it is still indicated as countertop
  

[Dave the Cook]

OK, tell me where I've got it wrong:

Let's also keep in mind that you've got a pot rack. If you want to keep that, we'll need to make allowances for it.

(Rachel: please note the appropriate use of yellow. )

[Rachel Perlow]

Eek! It's the dreaded current kitchen!

Getting back to dish storage, I think they should go in the upper cabinets (you were planning on upper cabinets there, right?) opposite the sub-zero, to the right of the sink (to the left when facing sink). The window right above the sink will be nice as you enter the kitchen from the dining room, being able to see outside from there will be nice, I mean. The dish storage will be nicely adjacent to the sink & dishwasher, and nicely convenient for bringing stuff into the dining room.

Edit: Credit Andy Lynes for my current overuse of the word "nice."

[Varmint]

That looks about right, Dave, but I need to go back and count the lights. I haven't truly paid attention.

[project]

Varmint:

"Oven Cleaning: Good point. But I still want it fairly clean from time to time."

My approach to oven cleaning is clearly an example of men behaving badly! There is an element of truth to not cleaning an oven, but, when lasagna or apple pie overflows, it is nice to lock the door, push a button, and come back with just some gray ash in the bottom and everything else clean. Besides, your little Varmints may start to have pizza parties where they bake overloaded pizzas directly on the oven racks and drip tomato sauce, fat from pepperoni, and pizza cheese on the bottom of your oven!

Of course, not everyone has a place for a compose pile. I've been shocked at how well mine works: I put vegetable peelings, too old vegetables, orange rinds, etc., and a few months later there is little or no evidence. It's shocking how fast the stuff disappears. Also, volumes indoors get totally lost in the volumes outdoors: A dishpan full of vegetables, large in the kitchen, is next to nothing when tossed onto the compost pile!

"Wine fridge: Yeah, it's not necessary, but we've got it, it keeps the white wine at the temperature I like, and they're very helpful when you have a party (and I have a fair number of those)."

Yes, a wine fridge could be nice for a big party! Uh, when your having some Meursault, maybe I'll find a reason to go to Chapel Hill and make a side trip! Gee, the white wine temperature I like is just from a bucket of ice water! If it's a little too cool, well, a hand on the glass warms it. For big reds -- I may have a few left in the basement -- the basement temperature is usually a little too cool so that, again, a little warming just as the thing 'breaths' or in the glass is enough.

Whew! Your explanation of the two posts in the corner kitchen window is good! I was seeing the roof falling in and huge sheets of plate glass scattering! Of course, there is little chance your carpenter would have made such a mistake.

"Hood: I need a good one. I've set off too many smoke alarms from searing a meat to be braised or cooking a steak. Simple enough."

Sure, if you have been setting off smoke alarms and want to keep doing such things indoors, then you need a really GOOD hood. Even with a hood, you may want something to permit closing off the rest of the house. Outdoors, clouds of steam from deglazing hot pans has put plenty of grease on my hair, face, and glasses and has even left some evidence on the siding of the house -- such things indoors would need a GREAT hood. The house I grew up in -- after my father remodeled the kitchen -- had a hood, and my brother and I used to fry lots of things at high temperatures. The grease trap in the hood collected a big mess, and I had to get good at cleaning the hood fan and the inside of the hood. It was shocking how much grease that hood sucked up, and that grease is one reason I concluded that anything that would need a hood I should just do outdoors.

Maybe one way to have a quieter hood would be to run a large tube, say, one foot in diameter and 20 feet long outside for the exhaust air and put the fan and its electric motor at the outside end of the tube. So, inside the house, have no fan, no grease trap, no filter, no screen -- just a hole one foot in diameter taking in air. Maybe the surface to be cleaned inside the house could be minimal; the tube could be disconnected and cleaned with a hose, pressure washer, or steam cleaner. For really cold weather, might have a plug could put into the tube at the kitchen end. Also, would need some screen at the open end of the tube to keep four or six legged 'varmints' from getting into the house!

If the fan motor is well separated from the air flow and the fan blades, then it might be possible to clean the fan easily with a hose, etc., too. All that hood cleaning from my childhood has long had me thinking of hood designs that don't require much cleaning and would be easy to clean!

One of these designs in a nearly airtight house says to have the forced air system exhaust into the kitchen, over the stove, out the hood, and outdoors, with no fan at all for hood itself. So, the air would be pushed out from the main house HVAC system.

A related idea is to have the walls around the stove covered in sheets of stainless steel or copper, to have a drain on the floor, and to clean the area with a wand driven by a steam source!

With the air leaks in your house, sure, the hood fan should have no problems getting air flow. However, in your area good summer A/C that gives low humidity promises to use a lot of electric power!

For judging the air flow of the exhaust fan, I would not place much weight on the BTUs per hour of your burners. Instead, my guess is that the main challenge would be from individual sudden large rising clouds of smoke and steam with grease, e.g., pan deglazing, start of steak searing, where one cloud would last only a few seconds. Even a small burner can generate such a cloud for a few seconds. For handling such sudden clouds, I would want to see what exhaust fan flow rate is commonly working well elsewhere, e.g., at friends or restaurants.

SubZeros have a great reputation, but I didn't know how quiet two of them would be. Considering how large they can be, I was wondering if they had an option for having the compressor and condenser outdoors.

It's clear you are very much in line to have a kitchen you will enormously enjoy for years with all the other Varmints, friends, the little Varmints and their friends, etc.!

[Varmint]

Well, there's 3 lights in the entryway (one in the entryway, one above the compactor counter, and one in the middle). There may only be 2 lights above the eating counter, but I need to confirm that.

Note the lovely track lighting in this lousy photo:

Recessed cans in entry area:

Recessed cans from utility room:

Recessed cans use very hot incandescent spot lights. The interior, "reflecting" area of the cans is black.

[saycheese]

Regarding your concern about getting a good rangehood -- I have been lurking with interest, because we are now in month 9 of a home renovation focusing on expanding a former 10 by 10 foot kitchen into roughly double the size, and bumping out the front of the house to make a new dining room. It has been a really fun experience -- one that was planned for about 4 years -- but as with a pregnancy, I'm ready for it to be over! When we looked for a rangehood, we wanted something big enough for the 6-burner Dacor gas cooktop we chose, and powerful enough to deal with all 6 burners going full blast at the same time. We also needed it to be ceiling mounted. We couldn't find anything we liked that was affordable, so we started looking into custom hoods. Surprisingly, the cost of a 54" custom hood was less than the cost of something like a Viking hood in the size we needed. We are using an external blower and motor by Thermador -- I think 1200 cfm's. See the website for Rangecraft for more info. We designed our own stainless steel hood, but you can also pick one of their existing designs. They offer two kinds of baffles, both of which go in the dishwasher for easy cleaning. We are expecting our hood to be delivered in a couple of weeks, and so far have been very pleased with the people we have dealt with at Rangecraft.

[robyn]

QUOTE from Robyn in Granite v. Marble Thread

In Varmint's thread about his kitchen renovation - he wants sexy appliances - but is willing to live with an undone floor and repainted cabinets. That wouldn't be my personal choice - but it's his kitchen and his money.

I don't want "sexy" appliances, Robyn. I want high performing appliances. Ones that kick out the heat and suck out the smoke.

My two objectives of this remodeling are function and space. Everything else is secondary. Looks will come later.

I agree - you have clearly said many times that looks will come later. All I'm saying is I'd probably have somewhat different priorities. Not that mine are right - and yours are wrong - they're just different. Robyn

[robyn]

To get rid of the closet really requires some structural changes, as a load bearing wall separates the closet and the ovens. A steel "I"-beam runs down the length of the eating counter, which then ties into another "I"-beam just beyond the end of the eating counter. Consequently, we can't really get rid of the closet at this time (that, and the issue of not having another closet available).

What's nice about this arrangement is that it still works in the master plan. When we close off the door near the driveway and put in a new door in the utility room, we'll likely move some external walls as well, making the room much more of a standard rectangle rather than the goal posts of its current configuration. We'll then be able to move out eating bars, closets and other items. That bar will be removed, moved, or pared back at some point in the future. Just not right now.

As far as the cooktop is concerned, that location has worked for years, in spite of its cramped nature. Thirty inches is a lot more than the current 20!!!

I'm sure we're already maxed out on the budget. There are a lot of things I'd like to do, but this is something that is reasonably affordable. I got a quick estimate for midlevel cabinets from one source: about $4500 without countertops. We'll be going with tile countertops for the most part, adding another chunk of expense. I'm staying with the "he-man" appliances -- actually, the only appliances that are considered "professional level" will be the cooktop and the hood. I'm not sacrificing performance on either of those items. We're keeping our dishwasher and microwave. But our spec list is quite extensive -- a lot of labor will be involved. I'll post the new spec list later.

In the end, with the configuration of our space and the traffic flow, it ain't gonna get much better than this. I'm liking what I see here. It will work. It'll open up the kitchen, allowing more people to be in it comfortably. It allows more people to work in the kitchen. Plus, it will be brighter.

Now, can someone help me out with replacement lighting?

I agree with Marie-Louise about the stove.

Rather than discuss/argue here - I think you should try something. I don't think you've decided on the stove you want yet - but pick a likely candidate. Get a big sheet of architect's paper from your father-in-law. Cut it to the size of that stove area. Draw in the stove. Put the piece of paper on something like your dining room table.

Then add a typical mise en place and other stuff you frequently use on both sides. And get the feel of it - go through the motions of how you cook some of your favorite meals - keeping in mind that with your new floor plan - (I think) you've eliminated some counter space that used to be within handy reach of the stove. In other words - give a paper mock-up a little test drive. And see if you like it. Robyn

[robyn]

5. CABINETS AND CARPENTRY

• Create new wall oven space

o Double ovens are 50 inches high

o Put microwave above wall ovens...

Do your kids ever use the microwave? They won't be able to in this configuration. My double ovens are 50" high - and they are 1 foot off the floor. I am 5 feet tall - and I wouldn't be able to use a microwave that was above the ovens without a step stool.

While you're thinking about it - are there any things relating to the kids being in the kitchen that you might have overlooked? Robyn

[Varmint]

I've already done that. The new configuration gives me a lot more space, simply because the unreachable corner is eliminated with the loss of the sink and its cabinetry.

Edit: This relates to robyn's idea of mapping out the space by the cooktop.

Edited January 20, 2004 by Varmint (log)

[robyn]

The only thing I'm not crazy about is the location of the cooktop. This config doesn't make for an ideal work triangle. Without having to read through this whole thread what's IM and WR?

Off the top of my head - I would like to take the cooktop off the wall (use that wall for something really shallow) - get rid of the peninsula to the right of the dishwasher - and float the cooktop in a big island in the middle of the room. Robyn

[Varmint]

While you're thinking about it - are there any things relating to the kids being in the kitchen that you might have overlooked? Robyn

That's an excellent point, and one that I had not fully considered. But of course, they'll have total access to the sink and dishwasher, which is there appropriate spot!!

Let me consider the island option again, although I don't like islands' ventilation that much.

[Marlene]

I'm not crazy about island cooktops either (sorry Robyn). People tend to congregate around cooktops which can be both dangerous and constricting when you're trying to cook. And if the kids are in the kitchen at all, the cooktop/island is a natural place for them to play tag around (yeah yeah, I know, it's not allowed ) and knock something over or get burned etc. Which is why I didn't put my cooktop on my immense island.

[Tam]

I'm not crazy about island cooktops either (sorry Robyn). People tend to congregate around cooktops which can be both dangerous and constricting when you're trying to cook. And if the kids are in the kitchen at all, the cooktop/island is a natural place for them to play tag around (yeah yeah, I know, it's not allowed ) and knock something over or get burned etc. Which is why I didn't put my cooktop on my immense island.

I concur, Marlene. Hard to protect the audience from grease spatterings when the cooktop is out in the open. At least one sheltering wall makes a difference.

[Varmint]

Plus, an island just turns my kitchen back into a maze -- one of the things that drives me crazy about it.

[hjshorter]

Let me consider the island option again, although I don't like islands' ventilation that much.

That would give you less open floor space in the kitchen though. Isn't the idea to open up the floor plan a little - create some open space?

This thread is giving me lots of good ideas, since we'll have just about the opposite of your problems, Dean. Our new kitchen has a 6 ft. galley with a large breakfast area - lots of open space, no storage, and sucky appliances.

[robyn]

"Hood:  I need a good one.  I've set off too many smoke alarms from searing a meat to be braised or cooking a steak.  Simple enough."

Sure, if you have been setting off smoke alarms and want to keep doing such things indoors, then you need a really GOOD hood.  Even with a hood, you may want something to permit closing off the rest of the house.  Outdoors, clouds of steam from deglazing hot pans has put plenty of grease on my hair, face, and glasses and has even left some evidence on the siding of the house -- such things indoors would need a GREAT hood.  The house I grew up in -- after my father remodeled the kitchen -- had a hood, and my brother and I used to fry lots of things at high temperatures.  The grease trap in the hood collected a big mess, and I had to get good at cleaning the hood fan and the inside of the hood.  It was shocking how much grease that hood sucked up, and that grease is one reason I concluded that anything that would need a hood I should just do outdoors...

I am in your camp when it comes to cooking things that are very greasy and smokey. Outdoors is the way to go.

That said - I have read some interesting articles about kitchen design for people who do lots and lots of wok cooking (which most people don't want to do outdoors ). This is a custom design problem in most parts of the country. But in areas of the country with large Asian-American populations - standard builder houses are designed for the way most of the people who buy those houses cook. A hunt on the internet might turn up some of those articles.

Also - if someone is going to do the kind of cooking indoors which requires a commercial quality hood - it would be a good idea to look into commercial or high quality fire extinguishing systems. They can be important. I once worked on a case where a BBQ place put in all kinds of fancy new stuff in its kitchen. First night they fired up the stove - it caught fire. The fire system failed - and the restaurant burned down. Needless to say - it was a good case and settled quickly. Robyn

[robyn]

That looks about right, Dave, but I need to go back and count the lights.  I haven't truly paid attention.

Here is one way to save money when it comes to lighting. Use a couple of "floating look" fluorescent fixtures for now. Maybe a rectangular one along the "galley" and a square one in the middle of the left hand area. They are cheap -energy efficient - and will give you tons of light. There are "warm bulbs" which emit a light color which won't make the kitchen look like a garage. Robyn