Does your oven heat up the kitchen?

[Shalmanese]

I keep on reading threads here about how people are unwilling to bake in summer because the "oven heats up the house". I've always been puzzled by this because I've never really noticed a significant increase in temperature with the oven on vs not turning the oven on. Even with the oven at 500F, the front panel is cool enough to touch.

So am I just not very temperature sensitive? Is my oven exceptionally well insulated? Is it only badly designed ovens that heat up the kitchen?

[tejon]

My oven heats up the house to such a degree that I'm wary of using it during the day when temperatures are warmer. If I have baking to do, I do it later at night or make things up in bits in the toaster oven. Having the oven on for any length of time raises the temperature in the house by up to five degrees (tested this several times out of sheer curiosity).

All that said, I have a crappy range that most likely isn't sealed particularly well. Haven't had access to a range that didn't heat the house yet, but some day...

[Zach Holmes]

I'm renting a house with a gas range, (which is much better than the electric ranges I have had to deal with in the past, but it heats up the entire house, (which isnt that big of a feat) so much so that it usually sets off the smoke detectors. Really big pain in the ass.

[mikec]

My oven heats up the house as well and I have a brand new DCS oven. It's cool to the touch, but vents in the front and thus heats the kitchen. Plus, every time you open the oven heat escapes.

It's a function of the oven itself and the ability of your air conditioning system to keep up with the heat.

[McDuff]

It's a function of the oven itself and the ability of your air conditioning system to keep up with the heat.

←

[Shalmanese]

My oven heats up the house as well and I have a brand new DCS oven.  It's cool to the touch, but vents in the front and thus heats the kitchen.  Plus, every time you open the oven heat escapes.

It's a function of the oven itself and the ability of your air conditioning system to keep up with the heat.

←

Maybe it's all about venting. I don't see any noticable venting in the front of my oven so I assume it vents from the back. Also, I tend to prefer not to open the door when using the oven. A probe thermometer tells me when meat is done and baking I might open it once near the end to check how long it has left then another time when it's done.

[helenjp]

I think one reason why it's such a big issue here in Japan is that lots of people have table-top ovens. Of course, that means you are getting the heat right in the chest body and face!

If I turn the oven on, I can see the temperature rise on the thermometer at the other end of the room.

[jgarner53]

Not only does my oven heat up the house (well, mostly the kitchen), it is equipped with its very own heater!

And no, I'm not being facetious. The makers of my stove thought that perhaps the housewife of the late 40's might want to heat her kitchen using this grand new appliance, and rather than giving me a broil-o-vator, or a second oven, put in a radiator shaped device, vented the door, and put the heater controls up along with the knobs for the oven and burners.

Sadly, this feature no longer works, but the oven alone does a dandy job of taking the chill off the kitchen.

I have never seen any other stove of this vintage with its own built-in heater, nor do any of the websites I've visited with old/refurbished stoves ever feature them.

[Trishiad]

Jenn, it's like an oven with gills! I love it.

Some mornings it's too chilly in the kitchen to temper chocolate so I close the kitchen door and make a batch of cookies to warm things up. The perfect working temp and a snack for later.

[racheld]

YESSS!! She's a beloved 40's/50's Franklin behemoth which turned out big hot lunches for the elementary school my oldest attended, feeding several generations of loud, elbows-and-knees hungry children the meat and potatoes and beans and cornbread they were accustomed to at home. When she reached retirement age in the early 90's, she was relegated to a storage area with a much larger model, an eight-burner, double-oven Garland in once-shiny steel, vs. the more humble six-burner, WIDE-oven dumpy black, steel-handled version that became mine, with her shiny red handles and big warming shelf above.

My Dad was a local treasure, able to measure and make any and all shelves, walls, doors, and the furniture to fill them. He gladly donated a lot of time and talent to the several schools, and they called on him quite often. One day, he was there doing some work, spied the two stoves and asked a price.

The lady said she didn't have a price, couldn't sell them, didn't even have a FORM with which to record the transaction if she COULD do so. Then a couple of days later, she called, said she'd talked it over with the Board, and they asked that he haul them to his workshop, call and give them an estimate of what it would take to get them in topnotch working order, and they would say, "Oh, that's too much---would you be so kind as to dispose of them for us?"

And so he did, and they did, and here we have ours---Sis got the big guy, nestling its broad shoulders into a custom-made (by Dad, of course) brick alcove at the end of her huge new kitchen, with a great swooping archway above, and a vent hood you could upend and roast an ox in.

Mine must have been set upon a raised platform, because in its natural state, it's almost munchkin-height, much wider than tall, so #1 Son, a welder by trade, made a lovely black metal platform which could support an elephant, should I ever wake and wander sleepily into the kitchen and find one scavenging peanut butter.

And it gets hot. The three big individual plates on top, each of which holds two burners, is cast iron, enameled to a shiny gleam, and with the pilot lights on, kept a steady glow in the kitchen that spread into the rest of the downstairs to an uncomfortable level. So now, I use one of those clever clicker thingies, but the oven pilot is something else---requires removing racks and bottom cover, kneeling in a grotesque position, lighting the little blue flame with one hand and keeping your other thumb on an oddly-located button for a count of 45, or entire paralysis of that arm, whichever comes first. Lighting the thing is like playing twister in an Iron Maiden.

It does get hot, so it's just now been put to use for the first time this summer. We had a lovely many-pepper shreds, fresh mozza, basil, and no sauce pizza the other night, and it officially ushered in Autumn. Soon the ranks of casseroles and breads and coffeecakes and homemade rolls will make their way through this old oven, with its memories of schoolchildren and their days of youth. Just smelling the great bounty that emerges from that wide creaky door brings back lovely memories.

If it weren't so late in the morning, I'd go put in a big old black skillet of cathead biscuits.

Edited October 17, 2005 by racheld (log)

[Ling]

When I'm in the kitchen baking in the summer and the oven is pre-heating, it gets almost unbearably hot. Our oven is old, and the door doesn't create a tight seal. Also, our kitchen is upstairs, so that makes it even hotter. My pie crust dough also starts sweating if I take too long to cut out my pastry leaves in the kitchen, so I've resorted to cutting them out on my little marble slab downstairs.

[Moopheus]

I have never seen any other stove of this vintage with its own built-in heater, nor do any of the websites I've visited with old/refurbished stoves ever feature them.

←

I had an apartment once with an oven/heater combo unit. As I recall the heater worked, but stank up the place mightily and was very inefficient, so we didn't use it.

Whe I was a kid, my dad was friends with the last real farmers in the town, and their house a big old cast iron, wood-fired oven. It was the central heating unit for the house.

[Kevin72]

Brand new Maytag double oven, wall-mounted, had it on most of Sunday to bake bread and I was soaked through my shirt cooking dinner that night.

[rooftop1000]

Not only does my oven heat up the house (well, mostly the kitchen), it is equipped with its very own heater!

And no, I'm not being facetious. The makers of my stove thought that perhaps the housewife of the late 40's might want to heat her kitchen using this grand new appliance, and rather than giving me a broil-o-vator, or a second oven, put in a radiator shaped device, vented the door, and put the heater controls up along with the knobs for the oven and burners.

Sadly, this feature no longer works, but the oven alone does a dandy job of taking the chill off the kitchen.

I have never seen any other stove of this vintage with its own built-in heater, nor do any of the websites I've visited with old/refurbished stoves ever feature them.

←

That bad boy is the ONLY heat in my BILs apartment in Hoboken Nj....good thing its a small apartment.

tracey

[PCL]

I think it's got something to do with building standards and codes of practice. It also has something to do with space design.

I have an older model electric oven, Westinghouse to be precise, they were very popular back in the early 80s in Australia, wall mounted, with top vents, grill in the bottom slide out drawer.

The kitchen is well ventilated, with an overhead extractor fan that augments the crappy rangehood.

Windows are left open during oven ops, and there isn't a significant amount of thermal load build up. But then again, we have a house with clear partitioning of space and use, so the walls are well insulated from one end to the other. In short, it doesn't get hot elsewhere. The kitchen warms up, but there is enough cross ventilation in the room to dissipate the heat outside, or through the vent at the top.

Apartments unless they're new, are generally not designed for heat dissipation in the kitchen.

[jvictor930]

This is completely unscientific research, but I have found that electric ranges and ovens don't heat up the space as much as gas ranges and ovens. In my Fiancee's apartment (which has a gas unit) it gets much hotter when cooking than in my apartment, which has an electric one. The same thing can be said for my parent's house as compared to my old townhouse. Gas seemed to give off more heat than electric.

Oh, in case there is a doubt about the validity of my homegrown research, this post has been sanctioned by the JVictor930 Institute for Gastronomy and BTU's.

[thecuriousone]

This is a good news bad news story. I researched for months on my kitchen rehab. I ended up getting a Kitchen aid programmable in black. Highly efficient. I couldnt have been more thrilled. The only thing is that my old stove was a 36 inch industrial 6 burner with pilot lights. My new kitchen is cold and drafty in the winter. I guess my efficient new dual stove is doing its job a bit too well.

This is completely unscientific research, but I have found that electric ranges and ovens don't heat up the space as much as gas ranges and ovens.  In my Fiancee's apartment (which has a gas unit) it gets much hotter when cooking than in my apartment, which has an electric one.  The same thing can be said for my parent's house as compared to my old townhouse.  Gas seemed to give off more heat than electric.

Oh, in case there is a doubt about the validity of my homegrown research, this post has been sanctioned by the JVictor930 Institute for Gastronomy and BTU's. 

←

[Kent Wang]

I have a small apartment where I don't pay for gas. I have the oven on right now just to heat up the place.