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How bad is my gas stove?

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Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#531

Post by randomswede »

samwillis wrote: post #110

To anyone considering switching to an induction hob and hearing anecdotal stories of how some people don’t think they are “as hot” or “slower” than gas. I guarantee these are all related to the pans being used. It is of upmost importance that you get a really good set of pans “designed” for induction. We have found “tri-ply” stainless steel pans work really well, better than on gas. Cast iron is also brilliant, I inh…

Due to a recent-ish move, I have gone from ~20 years with a gas cooker to induction (with about 6 months of halogen in-between). Induction is pretty good. It lacks the visceral feedback of "how hard am I driving this specific ring/cooking spot right now" that a gas flame has. But, it probably offers more precision.

Not tried a wok, yet, though.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#532

Post by rcxdude »

avianlyric wrote: post #517
thfuran wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, in the limited sense of immediacy of response to change in control input. But in the more general sense of also considering accuracy/consistency of response to a control input, not so much. If you have a low thermal mass pan on a middling heat setting on a hob with excessively wide pwm like that, you can tell when the hob is on and when it's off just by how much the contents are sizzling any given second. The p…

I’ve personally never encountered such a poorly designed induction hob. Induction hob require proper electronic control systems to operate, it would be weird to design such a system to operate with a wide PWM, it’s costs nothing for the system to operate at 1Hz or higher. In ceramic hobs, they usually don’t have proper power control systems. They normally rely on a set of thermal switches to disconnect the main heati…

My induction hob does similar on low power settings (at the lowest it's something like 1 second on to 4 seconds off). On higher power settings it's not noticable. I suspect the main reason for this is it's often harder (and more expensive) to design power electronics to operate over a wide PWM duty cycle efficiently, so the low-speed cycling is a way to provide the low settings without a significant cost increase.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#533

Post by maccard »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #378
maccard wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The curse of 120v strikes again. I did a quick Google and it looks like it'll cost you about $500 to install a 240v circuit, which is still a far cry under the 5k+ the above poster paid. A 3600kW combined set of burners is likely more than enough for many households

Yeah, I think it really depends on the state of your cabinets. The bare bones induction option is something like https://www.homedepot.com/p/Empava-36-in-Built-In-Electric-S... ? But you also need a 220+V and 40A circuit installed. How expensive this will be is 100% dependent on where your breaker box is in relation to your kitchen. Moreover, this option only works if your kitchen is already configured for a cooktop,…

> But you also need a 220+V and 40A circuit installed. How expensive this will be is 100% dependent on where your breaker box is in relation to your kitchen

From googling around it looks like $300 to $800 in the US; I can't use homedepot here in the UK but I found this [0] for $350. That's ~$800 for an upgrade to a hob , assuming you do the electrical work.

> Most American kitchens are still configured for ranges, so to install something like this you'd also need to retrofit your cabinets. Now prices are starting to add up.

Anyone who owns a house with a range doesn't need a subsidy, to be frank. _houses_ might be, but apartments are likely using shitty bottom of the range gas burners, or crappy electrical coils. In my experience a £99 ikea portable induction burner was _way_ better than my builtin gas stove in my last rental apartment.

[0] https://www.lowes.com/pd/Gasland-Chef-Gasland-Chef-I-H77BF-3...

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#534

Post by [deleted] »

CryptoBanker wrote: post #519
dionidium wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather live the way I want to live, and I'm not really bothered if my happiness cuts ten years off my life; I'd prefer seventy years of living to eighty years of not dying. This is a mis-framing of the relevant tradeoffs. Your options aren't a truncated life of joy vs. a longer life of asceticism. The tradeoff might instead be that one of your kids gets asthma and suffers with the condition for their entire lif…

All this says to me is that your value of joy is zero

[deleted]

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#535

Post by sandos »

samwillis wrote: post #110

To anyone considering switching to an induction hob and hearing anecdotal stories of how some people don’t think they are “as hot” or “slower” than gas. I guarantee these are all related to the pans being used. It is of upmost importance that you get a really good set of pans “designed” for induction. We have found “tri-ply” stainless steel pans work really well, better than on gas. Cast iron is also brilliant, I inh…

Slightly curved _undersides_ works really well on induction in my opinion. Since its contactless its better than the old cast-iron stovetops at least for rounded pans. :)

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#536

Post by sandos »

lultimouomo wrote: post #465
pkulak wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite way to show people how my induction stove works is to put some cold water in a kettle, pop it on a "burner", then turn it to "power boost". You can instantly see tiny bubbles forming on the bottom, and 20 seconds later it's at a rolling boil so intense you fear it may explode. I have no idea how anyone can say induction is slower than gas. And on the other end, low will slowly melt chocolate or heat a hol…

All the induction stoves I've tried, here in the EU, are great at boiling one pot of water. They suck at everything else. E.g. want to boil two pots of water in parallel? No can do - after warming up seemingly forever you will have one pot boiling for 5 seconds, then stopping and letting the other pot boil for five seconds, and so on. I want to love induction - no gas pipes, so much easier to clean, so much better fo…

Thats not the norm, we have at least 2 phases to our stovetop, and Iv'e never encountered any kind of power limit, even when using the "boost" mode on several pans at the same time.

We used to live in an apartment with single phase, there we had to somewhat limit the induction top to about 5,5kW and once again I practically never enocuntered it maxing out.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#537

Post by wlecometo »

Am i the only one confused by this part ?

> I looked at the energy usage data from our Nest thermostat and discovered that those levels corresponded almost exactly with the times that our gas furnace was on.

Another way of seeing this could be that nest is turning on the heat between 2am and 7am, and it looks like the author was not aware of this. so yeah the gas stove is bad but not as much as the heating system, and the fact that a "smart thermostat" turns it on at night when it should be less useful.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#538

Post by cooperadymas »

yourapostasy wrote: post #497
zeendo wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW - cast iron is incredibly cheap.

Even cheaper if you buy from a thrift store and put in some elbow grease. If you're an especially tool- and skill-rich hacker, then arc/stick welding with cast iron welding sticks can repair even lost causes. Of course, it isn't "cheap" by then, but any excuse to scratch that hacker/maker itch is fine by me.

I'm not really sure what welding has to do with any of this.

A cast iron pan at Wal-Mart is roughly the same price as a non-stick skillet and will outlast it by decades. Even if you don't want the Wal-Mart brand, you can buy Lodge, which is respected enough even by cast iron fanatics, and is cheaper even than mid range non stick or aluminum/steel skillets.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#539

Post by cooperadymas »

gcheong wrote: post #472
cooperadymas wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To anybody concerned about anecdotal evidence, here's my anecdotal evidence." Snideness aside, the fact that you have to concern yourself with what pans you buy for an induction stove is enough reason for many to not buy one. You can no longer buy any pan at a store, you must do your research first. Throw out my current pans and buy even more expensive ones? You're not exactly selling me the induction here.

They’re not necessarily more expensive and you won’t necessarily have to throw anything away they just need to be made with enough ferrous metal that it will work. A simple magnet test will tell you. In fact of all the cookware I have one of my more expensive pots doesn’t work on induction which seemed really odd to me.

FWIW, I don't doubt you and don't necessarily feel the need to be convinced here. The GP however posited exactly these things though - so your response is probably better suited for their comment.

Re: How bad is my gas stove?

#540

Post by 1123581321 »

yourapostasy wrote: post #496
kibwen wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's a part of me that still wonders at the future benefit/end to end efficiency The future is in completely abandoning residential gas infrastructure, which will have immense benefits in allowing us to stop maintaining and expanding millions and millions of miles of leaky underground pipes. No amount of tweaking the mixture will change the fact that electricity is broadly useful for everything, and that gas is…

> The future is in completely abandoning residential gas infrastructure... Gas tankless water heaters are still sometimes a cost-efficient per-therm choice if you are already plumbed for gas [1] [2]. I've yet to find a calculator that figures the TCO (including costs that are externalized today, like pipe losses to the environment) between tankless water heaters using natural gas, propane, resistive electric, inducti…

Heat pump water heating works with surprisingly low temperatures. For example, if your basement naturally approaches 45-50 degrees from the walls, that's plenty to keep a 50-80 gallon tank heated without drawing heat from the rest of the house in the winter. During the other seasons, any incidental cooling is of course a benefit.
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