I'm happy about improving air quality, but not happy that it's gonna be significantly more expensive than getting another gas stove :-/
I'm glad I can afford it but every time I see one of those "electric's not god-awful anymore, induction's amazing!" posts on Twitter or Reddit or whatever it's like... yeah, great solution for us folks with plenty of disposable income, I guess.
Not sure how I'm going to make certain kinds of flatbread that I heat directly on the flame. I'll figure something out I suppose.
Reports of the tops being easy to crack worry me, too. I don't like having to baby kitchen equipment.
[EDIT] Hrm. Reading about cooking technique on them, I'm not sure I'd be able to make scrambled eggs (that didn't suck). My technique relies heavily on being able to move the pan on and off the burner. I guess... I could live with just not making scrambled eggs.
Or buy an induction cooktop, which costs more, works more poorly and has a 5 year expected lifespan.
- potential incompatibility with existing cookware
- many induction stoves achieve lower levels of heat through TDM (turning on and off at max heat) which is horrible
- incompatibility with curved bottom cookware like a wok
- lack of knobs
- annoying beeping
Probably more so than average where I live (Baltimore), since a lot of the housing here is row homes instead of detached.
Just tangentially we've had a couple big gas explosions in the last half decade, too.
We'll have a hood regardless of fuel source. Enough stuff comes off the top as a direct result of cooking, that I'd rather not breathe.
Poor ventilation contributes To lots of other problems more acutely relevant than the low risks associated with your kitchen.
Most of what I see isn’t necessarily cost prohibitive, but looks like it’s built to fail. What products are people using where the experience has been pleasant?
Retail prices do also seem to be somewhat more expensive at similar feature/"trim" levels, too. Unless that's changed since the last time I was thinking about this (maybe a year ago).
Also, I've never met a flat-top stove that wasn't a terror to keep clean. Maybe induction's different, but that's another worry.
To me, a flat-top stove is a lot easier to clean than a gas stove with lots of grates and uneven surfaces.
Just compare these two stove tops:
https://www.geappliances.com/appliance/GE-Profile-30-Built-I...
https://www.geappliances.com/appliance/GE-Profile-30-Built-I...
Same size stove, similar number of heat elements. One has a bunch of grates to move, potentially wash elsewhere. Then there's knobs to remove to clean under them, the knobs themselves having various curves and flat sides to clean. The whole thing is a bit of a pan itself, so there's stuff to clean around that. The burner heads are round protrusions from that pan so you need to clean around them and then clean them as well.
Compared to the other stove, which is just a flat piece of glass. No protrusions. No edges. Just a single flat surface. To me, that single flat glass surface is way easier to clean. I don't even get how one could argue the other is easier to clean, there's far more parts with their own geometries involved.
On top of that, the glass cook top is more or less flush with the rest of the counter, does not have any grates or any other uneven surfaces, so its useful even as just additional counter top. I can easily put other small kitchen appliances on top of it and those appliances have a flat, solid bottom to them instead of trying to get the feet just right on a grate and then have them be inches above the rest of the counter top.
We have an older GE Profile glass cooktop with touch buttons on the right side. I was originally planning on tearing it out and putting in a gas stove when we moved in, which wouldn't have been too difficult as there's a gas line in the wall capped off as I guess a previous owner had a gas stove before they redid the kitchen with electric appliances. The benefits of it being a completely flat nearly counter flush surface and being far easier to clean in my opinion make up for the loss of more instant heat from a gas stove, so we're going to keep it for a while.
And I consider removability a benefit. It's much easier to scrub something at the sink than on the stove itself.
My mid range portable and expensive built in both do this. I get they want to let you know you've nudge a pan out of effect, but give me three seconds! That's all I want, three seconds before you fire the most annoying piezo buzzer on the planet.
not that i would want to do that with an expensive built in range. but it removes a major source of annoyance when using the little ones.
10 micrograms per cubic meter of NO2 is 5.3ppb. (conversion factor is 1.88ugm3/1ppb)
You can read it here: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/345329
Essentially "what it is" vs "what it should be".
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...
If you have a smart oven (or a little heat detecting sensor with an esp32), you can buy a smart switch to turn the fan on whenever the oven is on.
You'll have to quote it, since I don't see that in the peer reviewed research. Here's the entirety of mentions of hoods that I found:
> In fact, some kitchens have “ductless” hoods that recirculate fumes through activated charcoal filters, which are generally less effective at cleaning the air.
Where I am, it's illegal to have a gas stove without ducted vents since activated carbon filters won't prevent death from carbon monoxide. As mentioned, I have a ducted fan.
> Vented hoods have a range of effectiveness and function best when overhanging the stove. (12,13)
As mentioned, this is my experience, too. The average hood has abysmal CFM. If you've ever bought a range hood, you'll see know that the higher CFM come at nearly triple the cost, with fancy buttons and grills. There's no way to purchase a cheap AND high CFM vent from a common retailer. I think most people don't go for these high end fans. A duct fan that sucks 5x of a high end fan is probably on the "effective" side of things.
> Because exhaust hoods are separate from the stove and must be operated manually, vented hoods in practice are used only 25–40% of the time.
> Previous modeling-based approaches suggest that residents are exposed to NO2 levels above outdoor acute (1 h) exposure guidelines 62% of the time while using their stove but not using their range hoods, (36) and people use their range hoods only 28–36% of the time. (15)
This is why I suggested it should be automated, otherwise it's forgotten sometimes. Mine turns on with about 1 second of the oven turning on, and stays on for a few minutes after it shuts off. I think this is very important, and I would worry without this.
Perhaps one of the citations in that paper say they're not effective, but it's only suggested that they can be ineffective.
We know range hoods can work since they're used for noxious gases in basically every chemistry lab in the world. So, it's a bit silly to claim they can't work (there are standards to measure effectiveness). I think it's safe to claim that the average range hood is insufficient, but I don't think it's safe to claim that all are insufficient. :)
Regardless, the purpose of my comment was to show that steps can be taken to minimize risk and worry. I think the steps I've taken, according to the peer-reviewed research, do just that.
Well, we can think about why, and try to to minimize risk.
If it's unused, and they didn't control for diet, then it could be that they're eating processed foods. I would be extremely interested in seeing the diet of a family that didn't use a range/oven, and the relative amount of phthalates and the like.
Assuming they are getting good quality food, then an old stove will always have a pilot light on, even if it's unused. I think it would be hard to ventilate the emissions from a pilot light, since most ducted vents have flaps that only open when a fan is on. But...
If it's a modern stove, then an unused gas stove is the same as not having a gas stove at all, since there's no pilot light, unless you have a gas leak.
In my case, I have a modern stove, and no gas leak (it was tested), so I think my situation is probably different than whatever study you have in mind, assuming everything is properly ventilated while it's on.
I.e. since it's bubbling out anyway, use it to replace our natural gas burning, for a total reduction.
Why? I have gas, but induction, and the new one's that support temperature control of the pan itself, seem really neat. For baking, when I had electric, I would add a little container of water to maintain a little humidity, when needed.
Being able to maintain heat, while lifting the pan, is nice.
Won’t the coal or wood stove draw indoor air out, which would get replenished by drawing outside air inside?
Meanwhile the gas stove just vents it’s exhaust into room air?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4909253/
Which finds that fume hoods do not help:
>NO2 concentrations in the kitchen and bedroom did not significantly change following ventilation hood installation.
These are outdoor vented:
>Ventilation hood: Range hoods [BROAN® (Hartford, WI, USA) Range Hood model numbers 433611, 403001, or 423001] with ventilation fans to the outdoors and secure seal to minimize energy loss were installed over existing gas stoves.
For instance, they listed "flow rates for the models used as 160–220 cubic feet per minute".
These are range hoods typically used for electric models - not gas. 400 CFM is generally considered a baseline hood for gas stoves (100 CFM / 10000 BTU).
I would feel much more confident in their results had they used more powerful range hoods that were more appropriate for the stoves in question.
As an aside, I lived in an old house with electric range which just blew the air up at a 45 deg angle, but as people have gotten taller, it would just blow into my face.
So an improvement yes, but not a complete fix.
So if you're in to energy efficiency gas appliances make some sense. There's something ridiculous about burning a ton of gas [to boil water and spin turbines], which generates and sends electricity (with enormous losses at every step) to a stove which heats a coil ... to boil water.
There are more carbon emissions from electric appliances over gas appliances because of the losses (entropy, etc) at each step.
Even if I wasn't against fossil fuel based appliances in principle, this was enough to make me actively worry about living in a house with a gas stove.