Glass top or coil top cooktop.

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Feb 5, 2023
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So my parents are wanting to remodel their kitchen and being that their cooktop has a giant crack, my mother wants to get a new one. My parents are the type who do NOT want the newest, latest, greatest or most efficient, they care about reliability, ease of repair, ease of use, ease of finding repairman, ease of finding parts, US made, US owned (if possible and reasonable), etc.

To make it clear the type of people they are and what type of taste they have, They have a '50s era deep freeze freezer with a mechanical handle that they still use, They have a side-by-side refrigerator with no dispenser because they had a dispenser once against their desire and complained about the dispenser constantly, they have a dishwasher only because of the previous owner of the house had one installed and my father would prefer to just take it out and never replace it even though it works fine because in his mind it costs more money to do that and he's worried about it ruining the floor. If they had designed This kitchen, it would have been a range instead of a cooktop and wall oven, And they were happy with using a ancient microwave that was taking three times as long to cook things and would periodically add time for no apparent reason on the counter even using it after I bought them a top-of-the-line brand new one It wasn't until one of their friends really bugged them that they finally threw the fire hazard machine away.

(I'm going to say this very clearly, They will NOT get either an induction top or gas top so please don't make a recommendation about it because that is completely off the table. My mother loves her glass cookware and other non-magnetic pots and pans and she will not happily change away from that. She has specifically insisted we find more of them when they break. So induction is a never so please do not even bring it up. The gas top would be prohibitively expensive to install so please don't recommend that either.)

The choices they have is going to be either another glass top or coil top. I've noticed that recent coil tops have some kind of strange sensor in the middle that I'm not quite as familiar with. I think they could go either way on which top they want based more on which one is going to be less of a headache as they have had both and have things they like and dislike about both. Their plans for the countertop is to use a laminate as they don't like granite or any of the expensive stuff. They're fairly frugal people.

With the choices available, their natural direction would be something under whirlpool group (whether it's under Whirlpool or Maytag) since they're unlikely to buy anything from Viking as that's way too fancy for them And I doubt that it would be worth the money to spend on the kitchenaid or Jenn-Air brands.

I can tell you for sure options like Wi-Fi will not interest them, if anything they would prefer not to have them. Any unnecessary complication becomes a point of frustration and ranting for my father. So in other words we want as conventional knobs where ever possible since The button pad on their wall oven (installed by the previous owner) has worn away and is a source of rants.

Please provide opinions between coil versus glass top. If there's anything glaringly wrong with Whirlpool or Maytag cooktops, please let me know (If one between the two is better please clarify why). If there's another brand that fits the criteria, please let me know That's the only other one I have thought of as premiere but That's probably too low end for their taste. If they went with anything other than whirlpool, they would probably want to stick with brands they are familiar with (GE, Frigidaire, Even though those are no longer US owned and yes I know who owns GE currently but They prefer what they are familiar with) so regardless how good they may be, please don't recommend LG, Samsung, Bosch, Miele, etc. And please remember that induction cooktops are a NEVER EVER for them. They do NOT want to change. They want to feel like they are helping their community by buying American and they want something dependable.
 
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IMHO, coil is better for cooking, glass for cleaning, used both types for years each one. We have gas one now, wasn't my choice, great for cooking, pain to clean, also fire hazard. If I were single I'd go with coils.
 
you may want to check out Hotpoint. It is just a lower end GE with older designs. We have Hotpoint gas though but they have electric too. They are less expensive but older design reliable.
 
Gee do the parents have an electric refrigerator? No self defrost? Or do they still have an icebox with someone coming in to put in a block of ice? Only kidding you, of course. I knew someone we called "milliwatt Rob". His electricity use was minimal. No electric clocks, only used night lights for illumination after the sun went down. His electric meter disk often was not turning at all.

For the parents, coils are the only way to go. Maybe with a built in wood fired cooktop. My grandparents , in the 1950s, bought a combination stove that was half wood, and half open flame burner propane. they would start a wood fire every morning. One day they had a chimney fire and burned down their kitchen, And had no fire insurance.
 
Modern coil top ranges are different than what many of us used in the past. They have a combination on/off thermal safety switch in the heating elements. The modern coil top takes longer to boil water and requires you to put a lid on the pot or it'll never get hot enough to boil water.

 
Thanks for posting.
It's good to learn that the industry has adopted a thermostat-style limit switch.....good so we can avoid them.
Anyone remember the infomercial for woks which dismissed electric woks for that very reason (wildly varying temperatures)

One thing mentioned very incompletely is the relationship of old-style coils to grease fires.

Towards the end he misspeaks by saying electric stoves are "underwritten" by a laboratory instead of "limited" by the UL's conclusions.

A 12-minute video which should've been 2 minutes, max.
 
So my parents are wanting to remodel their kitchen and being that their cooktop has a giant crack, my mother wants to get a new one. My parents are the type who do NOT want the newest, latest, greatest or most efficient, they care about reliability, ease of repair, ease of use, ease of finding repairman, ease of finding parts, US made, US owned (if possible and reasonable), etc.

To make it clear the type of people they are and what type of taste they have, They have a '50s era deep freeze freezer with a mechanical handle that they still use, They have a side-by-side refrigerator with no dispenser because they had a dispenser once against their desire and complained about the dispenser constantly, they have a dishwasher only because of the previous owner of the house had one installed and my father would prefer to just take it out and never replace it even though it works fine because in his mind it costs more money to do that and he's worried about it ruining the floor. If they had designed This kitchen, it would have been a range instead of a cooktop and wall oven, And they were happy with using a ancient microwave that was taking three times as long to cook things and would periodically add time for no apparent reason on the counter even using it after I bought them a top-of-the-line brand new one It wasn't until one of their friends really bugged them that they finally threw the fire hazard machine away.

(I'm going to say this very clearly, They will NOT get either an induction top or gas top so please don't make a recommendation about it because that is completely off the table. My mother loves her glass cookware and other non-magnetic pots and pans and she will not happily change away from that. She has specifically insisted we find more of them when they break. So induction is a never so please do not even bring it up. The gas top would be prohibitively expensive to install so please don't recommend that either.)

The choices they have is going to be either another glass top or coil top. I've noticed that recent coil tops have some kind of strange sensor in the middle that I'm not quite as familiar with. I think they could go either way on which top they want based more on which one is going to be less of a headache as they have had both and have things they like and dislike about both. Their plans for the countertop is to use a laminate as they don't like granite or any of the expensive stuff. They're fairly frugal people.

With the choices available, their natural direction would be something under whirlpool group (whether it's under Whirlpool or Maytag) since they're unlikely to buy anything from Viking as that's way too fancy for them And I doubt that it would be worth the money to spend on the kitchenaid or Jenn-Air brands.

I can tell you for sure options like Wi-Fi will not interest them, if anything they would prefer not to have them. Any unnecessary complication becomes a point of frustration and ranting for my father. So in other words we want as conventional knobs where ever possible since The button pad on their wall oven (installed by the previous owner) has worn away and is a source of rants.

Please provide opinions between coil versus glass top. If there's anything glaringly wrong with Whirlpool or Maytag cooktops, please let me know (If one between the two is better please clarify why). If there's another brand that fits the criteria, please let me know That's the only other one I have thought of as premiere but That's probably too low end for their taste. If they went with anything other than whirlpool, they would probably want to stick with brands they are familiar with (GE, Frigidaire, Even though those are no longer US owned and yes I know who owns GE currently but They prefer what they are familiar with) so regardless how good they may be, please don't recommend LG, Samsung, Bosch, Miele, etc. And please remember that induction cooktops are a NEVER EVER for them. They do NOT want to change. They want to feel like they are helping their community by buying American and they want something dependable.

At that price range they're all about the same and may or may not be assembled in the US let alone owned by a US company.
 
My wife and I are very simple folks as well and just went with a brand-new GE coil-top range.

They have a combination on/off thermal safety switch in the heating elements. The modern coil top takes longer to boil water and requires you to put a lid on the pot or it'll never get hot enough to boil water.

Yes...the sensi-temp burners are now mandated to protect people from themselves; however, they are easily replaced by 1) bypassing the sensors below the cooktop, or 2) simply replacing the coils with "normal" ones (they are plug & play). We did the latter.
 
After 40 years of hands on kitchen research, :giggle: I can offer the following observations.

Coils will heat up and cool off fairly quickly, but they never seem to sit level which is a hassle when trying to cook with just a little oil or butter in a pan. They also never seem to be flat which means you get some coils contacting the pans and others that don't so hot spots can arise, especially if the pan isn't flat either. There is also this curious phenomenon that they somehow always accumulate a few specs of something combustible while they are off so there is inevitably a puff of smoke created when you turn them on.

Glass tops are of course flat so with good flat bottom pans the heat is very even. You can also level up the stove to gnat sazz perfection so oil and butter spreads out evenly and do not puddle Warped pans aren't so much a problem with burning as they are just really slow to cook. You will throw them away.

THE BIG ISSUE with cooking on glass tops is thermal inertia, and that seems to very from one brand to the next. I have owned Whirlpool and Frigidaire and there was a bit of a learning curve but after getting calibrated I know what setting to start with and how long it will take to get warm so I'm good with it. You do have to remove pots from the element when done because they will stay cooking temperature for several minutes.

My mother has a GE glass top stove and I cannot cook on that appliance. It takes FOREVER to heat up which misleads you into thinking you haven't ordered enough heat, and then 3 minutes later everything is boiling over and burning. Then it takes forever to cool back down. I would recommend staying away from GE glass tops for that reason.

The cleaning issue is a pick your poison choice. The coils have the reflectors which are difficult to get burned spills out of, and then there is the catch pan underneath that requires lifting the top up so it generally gets ignored until big messes have accumulated.

The glass pretty much has to be cleaned after each use or at minimum each day. The tops are all black now which means they show EVERYTHING. They will get dirty just sitting there. Cleaning intensity can range from wiping with windex to scraping hard burned stuff with a razor blade, followed by soft scrub, then finishing with the glass top polishing cleaner. Since it is all visible all the time, you will be coerced into keeping it clean or it will look awful.

At the end of the day though, I would take the glass top.
 
I replaced a coil top with a glass top 6 years ago. The glass cleans up nicely and is not scratched at all. Just don't use cast iron on it and it should last a long time.

I also use a 29qt Presto pressure canner on it without any issues.
 
Gee do the parents have an electric refrigerator? No self defrost? Or do they still have an icebox with someone coming in to put in a block of ice? Only kidding you, of course. I knew someone we called "milliwatt Rob". His electricity use was minimal. No electric clocks, only used night lights for illumination after the sun went down. His electric meter disk often was not turning at all.

For the parents, coils are the only way to go. Maybe with a built in wood fired cooktop. My grandparents , in the 1950s, bought a combination stove that was half wood, and half open flame burner propane. they would start a wood fire every morning. One day they had a chimney fire and burned down their kitchen, And had no fire insurance.
LOL, oh please don't remind them of those systems, they might downgrade to them. LOL.

Thankfully they aren't that bad. And don't get me wrong, they're very nice people, they're a kind and considerate people, and are actually very generous to others and they will spend more if spending more means it's going to be a reliable product versus a cheaper one (example they are the type that would spend the money on a speed queen versus a standard washer but they would never be happy with a fancy high tech washer for the same price). The main thing is they are creatures of habit and any change frustrates them. They are NOT tech savvy at all and we are called constantly to help them troubleshoot things. They judge everything against the original of whatever they had which will always be the best even if it was objectively the worst. (They want to drive minivans for life even though it's only the two of them and the original one with a 4 banger, no cruise control that croaked at 127k is gold standard not their second one that reached 208k miles before retirement or their current one with 160k miles. Their avocado Kenmore washer was the best even though it got jammed constantly, it never broke even though the exact same things broke on it as the whirlpool that replaced it did, and "we should have got a Kenmore instead" even though a Kenmore of that vintage WAS a Whirlpool and probably the exact same model. And when they left that washer behind and get one of the last direct drives, anytime it has a flaw, "oh we never should have left that good old machine behind." If they don't need my heed my advice and get a new one they'll start missing their current one on a daily basis as the things that they hate about the current one is just the tip of the iceberg.)

To be fair, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. I have similar habits and tendencies.

I appreciate everyone's help. I think we are going to go with glass top after the explanation from that the new coil tops do not heat like the old ones. It sounds like a whirlpool or Maytag would probably be fine. I think that's the direction we're going to go. Thank you.
 
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We've had a Whirlpool glass top for years (so old that I bought it at a Sears store) and it has been no problem. I cook on it all the time and easy clean up. Looks great in the kitchen.
 
They judge everything against the original of whatever they had which will always be the best even if it was objectively the worst.
I feel your pain. My mother has never gotten a new appliance, furniture, car, or doctor that she liked and never had an old one that wasn't solid gold. Despite all the medical advances in her 90 years of life, "these new doctors just don't know as much as the old ones".
 
Coil is old school so I would tend to think they are a little bit simpler and more reliable than glass top. Plus, there is no risk of the glass getting scratched or broken.
 
Never had an issue with mine in over 5 years, and my wife uses it daily with multiple “burners” at a time most days. Don’t buy a cheap one and I don’t foresee any issues. It’s simply a coil top with a flat surface.
Same! It's been some years since we owned one, but they're awesome and so easy to keep tidy.
 
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