Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How bad is my gas stove?

carbonswitch.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 541 posts

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#421

Post by mdoms »

noduerme wrote: post #254
mhh__ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with gas for me at least isn't that the heat is better or anything like that but that I feel like I can control the application of the heat better. You can move the pan around heat-surface (or an isotherm, technically) in 3D whereas with induction (I imagine it's better if you spend enough) for the same price it seems harder to get that feel. Definitely an electric oven though.

100% - the ability to visually check the flame is crucial. Especially when you're cooking a lot of things quickly at different temperatures. Without that visual cue, you're just guessing every time. Induction is amazing, but harder to work with. There might be a good idea in making stoves that visually show the temperature of what's in the pot versus how much heat is being fed into it. That would maybe convince me to…

The flame doesn't tell you squat, but if you insist then you can get induction cooktops with a fake flame effect to help you to continue to believe this nonsense. I use this one, it looks pretty cool.

https://www.samsung.com/nz/cooking-appliances/cooktops/induc...

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#422

Post by mdoms »

maxwell86 wrote: post #151
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you will have to get a Wok with a flat bottom If it has a flat bottom, then it’s not a wok. Personally, I hate cooking on induction. My parent have it and it never worked for me. I need to see/hear the gas to be able to control the heat properly. Once they shut off the gas lines due to the energy transition, I’m going to run a gas pipe from the kitchen to my basement and just buy it in canisters.

> If it has a flat bottom, then it’s not a wok. It has a flat bottom "outside", inside it has the same shape as a normal wok.

No.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#423

Post by antattack »

JasonFruit wrote: post #386

Well, that was a nice read. Now I'm going to go cook lunch on the woodstove. To me, not everything is about safety and health; some things are about what my family likes . We like to work together cutting wood and stacking it for the winter. We like the feel of wood heat. My kids are proud that they can cook on an appliance most people never even attempt. We like the feeling of a tie to the past, that we're doing tas…

(Indoor) pollution has long term consequences, we need carbon tax so the costs of it are not socialized while profits are privatized.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#424

Post by throwawaysea »

rsanheim wrote: post #17
jsharpe wrote: post #5

I'm curious what improvement, if any, is seen from using the fan on the range hood while using the gas stove/oven. Since I heard about this issue, I've been using it every time I use the stove or oven, and it does make a different to the subjective gas smell around the house, but I don't know if it impacts actual NO2 levels.

This thread ( https://twitter.com/curious_founder/status/14820133110341427... ) is from a different author on the same subject, but basically, the range hood had no effect on NO2 levels. It helped a lot with PM2.5 levels, but not at all with NO2. From the linked study ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4909253/ ): > Ventilation hood installation did not significantly reduce indoor NO2 concentrations in ou…

I happen to have a kitchen with both induction and gas tops, and to be honest I avoid using the induction ones almost entirely except for boiling water. It’s simply not the same experience cooking on induction compared to having an actual flame. I feel better as a cook with a gas stove but I also just enjoy it more.

> The research explains that the lack of effectiveness of hoods could be due to many factors (improper installation, lack of use), but at least at first glance it seems that a hood doesn't help with NO2.

I don’t know if you can claim a hood doesn’t help. As you noted, the study admits they don’t know if hoods were even turned on by the residents. It simply doesn’t make sense that hoods venting to the outside would have no effect, and so I have to imagine this is a lack of appropriate controls over the experiment here.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#426

Post by ajmurmann »

ysleepy wrote: post #74
logifail wrote: post #54

Can anyone recommend (ideally inexpensive) devices/kits to measure CO2 and NO2 levels in a residential home? Ideally capable of sending data to be stored & processed locally (Home Assistant or similar).

I got a MH-Z19 co2 sensor attached to an esp with esphome, works really well.

Does it measure NO2 though?

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#427

Post by Jailbird »

gerikson wrote: post #373
Jailbird wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind naming the brand? We got a single pot model (59500P) by Vollrath to test out induction. We love it and wish all hobs had controls by single digit percentage. We cannot seem to find a cooktop equivalent. Edit: I read further and realized you got single plates too. The search continues....

This is our model https://universal.bertazzoni.com/products/professional-serie... SMEG also has induction stoves with knobs but we don’t trust that brand.

Thanks!

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#428

Post by drobert »

I'm curious if using an extractor hood makes a difference. If it's sized correctly the extractor should replace the air 8-10 times per hour so that should eliminate I guess most pollutants in the kitchen.

Another way to look at the this is checking the health outcomes of chefs, given they spend much more time next to the stove we should see increased respiratory problems.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#429

Post by throwawaysea »

JasonFruit wrote: post #386

Well, that was a nice read. Now I'm going to go cook lunch on the woodstove. To me, not everything is about safety and health; some things are about what my family likes . We like to work together cutting wood and stacking it for the winter. We like the feel of wood heat. My kids are proud that they can cook on an appliance most people never even attempt. We like the feeling of a tie to the past, that we're doing tas…

> I think we as a society are over-prioritizing personal safety.

This is called safetyism. It’s the notion that perfectly safe conditions are worth the immense tradeoff they require, like removing individual freedom and agency. But it is also the recent trend of claiming safety matters above all other factors to an absolute degree, and that everyone should be forced to value it as such. We see this manifested in political actions that are absolute (mandates, bans etc). There are other definitions for safetyism as well (https://quillette.com/2018/09/02/is-safetyism-destroying-a-g... ). But my point is that life isn’t one size fits all and our policies shouldn’t be either.

Thanks for sharing your experience of working with wood alongside your family. These experiences and their value are unknown to most city dwellers, and they default to assigning zero value on these things when they propose banning everything that isn’t part of their own life. I get what you’re saying about a wood stove. There is value in that ritual and tradition and life’s pleasures. I personally love a gas range for a similar reason, which is that cooking over a flame is culturally important to me. I also find it is simply far better than my induction top for most cooking (except boiling water, for which I have a $20 electric kettle anyways).

In the case of gas stoves and gas furnaces, it’s astonishing that people ignore that most new setups vent to the outside, which is required in many areas. Even if NO2 is elevated, my feeling is that not everything in life has to be 100% clean or safe, since life inherently comes with risks and it is up to each individual to make personal choices about what risks to tolerate for the benefits. Most people cooking daily with gas stoves live long healthy lives and don’t have issues stemming from NO2 exposure and very few are sensitive enough that a minor elevation of NO2 would cause health issues. This is only a problem for the most sensitive of people.

So are gas ranges really a problem or just an overblown fear by proponents of safetyism or climate activists used to justify top down gas bans?

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#430

Post by darksaints »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #381
kibwen wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome to your own personal preference, but concluding that "they are very impractical devices and not fit for purpose in any way" is so clearly hyperbolic that it deflates your entire position.

I mean, they are probably okay if all you use it for is boil a pot of pasta or heat some soup. If you actually like cooking they are pretty much useless. It’s like working with one hand tied behind your back.

This is complete bullshit.

https://eurokera.com/blog/professional-chefs-love-induction-...

https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/78mvqa/why-londons-top-c...

https://www.treehugger.com/professional-chefs-are-dumping-ga...

It's one thing to have a preference, and another thing altogether to lie about the things you don't like to bolster your preference.

Post reply on HN