United States moving to ban Gas Stoves

Both my parents grew up with wood cooking and heat. Dad's house didn't get electricity until he was a teenager. The wood cookstove is still there, though unused in my time and no longer connected to the chimney. Wood heat was replaced by a ground source heat pump only eight years ago, when he could no longer keep the furnace fed. The wood furnace had never been managed cleanly, so removing it was a major air quality improvement, both inside and out, reducing his lung ailments. My lungs were similarly exposed just over decade, not a lifetime.

I don't know if the various villages where mom grew up had any electricity, but it so, it wasn't enough for heating appliances, so they cooked with wood and oil. "Better" electricity wasn't available until they moved to the "big city" -- Juneau. After moving to the Continental U.S., then they had electricity and gas. Of those four cooking fuels, she preferred electricity, so that is what I learned. I always hated staying in places with gas cooking.

 

We have a 50K btu propane heater for backup. It's made unvented. Built in CO alarm. It's never gone off during testing. It's a mystery.

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At what level is it set to go off? 400 ppm?

Sometimes it's nice to have on hand one CO detector of the kind that displays numeric ppm readings. Then you can see what's going on at levels below where the alarm-only ones start honking.

 

Back to the OP's linked article .... it's silent as to whether the tested stoves were electronic ignition versus pilot lights versus leak detection prior to tested stoves being tested. Just wondering how all that plays into it.

it's variable - 400ppm+ in a few minutes of concentration - down to 50 ppm over 8hrs (something like that) . Testing w/ natural gas fuel - ran our 6kW Honda inverter/genset for over 4hrs in the garage to finally set off heater's CO alarm - w/ roll up door ⅓ the way open. The ppm counter was such that even after venting - the alarm's ppm counter was still averaging some residual particles apparently & would honk occasionally for quite some time afterwards.
But ... in our +1,100² ft basement area running propane - running at low heat 8hrs intermittently? no alarm.
Again - this is JUST for emergency backup in a S H T F scenario - no electricity or nat gas heat in mid winter.
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I get a different sort of chill thinking about that sort of testing

 

The OP article is a report on reports of the topic. I recall another one mentioning a pilot light to igniter difference, but you'll likely have to find the actual studies to find what that difference was.

 

We've had the range in for a few days now, made friends with it and so forth.

The cooktop is phenomenal for power and speed. Everything I was expecting. Almost comical how fast the thing reacts to power adjustments.

Only one pan didn't work- it's cast iron so that wasn't the problem, it's just too big. It's a big griddle panel meant for two burners and it's a half inch too long to fit into the recess provided. I found a different one that fits and we decided to dedicate the big one to outdoor cooking.

The built-in air fryer is a mixed bag. It cooks fine, good results on the table. But the control system is very poorly conceived; to the point where we may wind up hanging onto the old countertop fryer. That's a disappointment. Not quite worth sending it back, but I might not consider this brand next time I need an appliance.

Regular baking and convection baking seem fine but I haven't tried any of the really touchy recipes yet.

So much easier to clean than the old one, and looks a lot nicer too.

 

The units with the ceramic/glass tops look great. One word of warning though. Be extremely careful with cast iron. It has a habit of scratching the stove top. My BIL has been living with us since COVID and he has a horrible habit of sliding stuff across the stove top instead of lifting and placing. It has made the top look like crap.

 

Appreciate the warning! I had already gone over ours looking for any kind of burrs or spalling that might give us scratches, nothing noted yet.

One of our pans is a family heirloom, 110 year old cast iron skillet in the family since new. Works great and I hope to pass it on!

EDIT: I wonder if you can do cerium polishing, like with an irreplaceable windshield?

 

Are there any made with a different top material?

It seems like the glass ceramic materials were chosen earlier for the radiant ranges, where the advantage was the material's high transparency to infrared radiation coupled with low heat conduction and low transparency in visible light. And of course being tough enough, with low thermal expansion.

I'm thinking all you'd need for an induction top would be the tough and low thermal expansion part, and not being an obstacle to a 20 to 60 kHz magnetic field. It might be fun to see other top materials being used.

 

I gather that they are also using the thermal insulation property of the glass to keep the heat on the top side and away from the electronics. I notice it also does active cooling (because I can feel the draft) but I have no way of knowing which parts are being cooled.

In theory I could lay down a thin mat of some sort (silicone? aluminum?) and cook through it, but haven't felt like trying yet.

 

Once he eventually moves his a** out to his own place (which may be never since he has it pretty damn good here), I have a plan to try some polishing compound and a power drill. Totally based off some videos I've seen, lol. If not successful, then either replace the top or the entire unit.

 

Maybe ixnay on the thin aluminum.

It seems that what makes a good inductive pot material is having a very small skin depth (having the induced electric current confined to a very small thickness). An aluminum pot doesn't heat well on induction, because aluminum has a large skin depth, and in the thickness of a pot bottom, the current isn't very confined.

But in a thin layer like aluminum foil, what confines the current is the physical thickness, never mind the theoretical skin depth, and the foil will reportedly heat like gangbusters, melt, and trash the glass ceramic.

 

Yay molten aluminum! I think I'd rather see that one on youtube than in my own kitchen.

I'm sticking to experiments like "sesame oil or chili oil?"

 

Give it a thin skim coat of fine silica sand, Portland, and mineral pigment, and start a whole new induction cooktop trend.

... I suppose it might not adhere or hold up well enough.

On the bright side, it'll adhere better, the more scratches you can get your BIL to put in.

 

I had to look it up... MSRP $310 for a new hunk o glass for ours. Hoping I never need that information again.

 

I’ve seen demonstrations boiling a pot of water with a paper towel under the pot.
I haven’t tried that myself, but just wanted to mention it.

 

I don't think you'd want that pot to boil dry.

 

With most induction stovetops there is a safety sensor which will turn off in that event.
I am not sure how much damage the pot would take before the cooktop would be turned off.

 

I've skimmed through a few manuals for them I was able to find online. They all seem to have a sensor for "no ferromagnetic item is sitting over the coil" and will turn off in that event. And they have overheat protection that kicks in if the coil or driver electronics overheat.

I didn't see any clear reference to a feature limiting how hot your pot can get. It's built to get pots hot. They do warn against letting an unattended pot boil dry. They also say you should clean any molten metal off the cooktop before it solidifies.

A paper towel sitting under a waterless pot will probably ignite before the pot bottom melts (something about 451 ℉ sticks in my mind, which is well before aluminum would melt).

Perhaps the burning paper towel wouldn't directly damage the pot above or the cooktop below it. But any flaming bits of it wafting through the kitchen could be trouble.