Open vs sealed gas burners.

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For those who like to cook on gas. Do you ever wish you had open rather than "sealed" burners? As I get older I find myself getting more annoyed by the "cold spot" in the center of the pan. I know some dual-stack power burners still exist on European units but that's quite a bit of $$ for something so simple..



Perhaps one day I'll be able to go induction.
 
Our Dacor range has sealed burners and I hate them, especially for smaller saucepans and pots because the flame makes the edge of the pan scorch while the center barely simmers.
 
I don't think I'd buy a gas range at all. There are concerns about the (toxic) combustion products being released into room air. I seem to recall there being evidence of a higher rate of chronic respiratory problems in people who use gas stoves as well - which is exactly the concern.

And for the record, current induction stoves have disadvantages too. Friends have a high end (Bosch I think) induction stove and the wailing of the cooling fan (which keeps the electronics cool when using the oven) drives them mad. It could just run and make some noise, but no, it winds up and then shuts off repeatedly. They've had the service people check it and have been told that's the way they are.

We have a conventional glass top electric stove that we're nursing along until someone sorts induction out.
 
Poor quality cookware I believe is the blame for uneven heating. I never had an issue using my range with sealed burners. Sure beats electric and convection which I do not have the patience to use.
 
I've never noticed a difference between open vs sealed gas burners. I didn't even know that was a thing, I thought those tops were to help distribute the flame and to stop crumbs from falling in. I won't touch an electric stove though, those things don't get hot enough or hot fast enough plus I don't want to worry about the glass top breaking as I put a pot or pan down.
 
those things don't get hot enough or hot fast enough plus
Food for thought:
my induction stove boiled 7qts of water in 6min last night.
my previous gas stove on the largest burner was 10min+ for the same pan.
and also made the handles too hot to touch.

I like gas but in my tiny kitchen it would make the room Very warm. also took forever to heat small(er) pans.
or pots such as my 8qt spaghetti pot that is tall but not superwide.. you could have flames shooting out past the bottom of the pan.
still took forever to boil water.

Wasnt as bad in the 12qt full width pan but the induction still heats nearly twice as fast.
IIRC stove had a 10k or 12k burner. The biggest induction burner uses a max of 2000watt... efficiency at work.
 
I don't think I'd buy a gas range at all. There are concerns about the (toxic) combustion products being released into room air. I seem to recall there being evidence of a higher rate of chronic respiratory problems in people who use gas stoves as well - which is exactly the concern.

And for the record, current induction stoves have disadvantages too. Friends have a high end (Bosch I think) induction stove and the wailing of the cooling fan (which keeps the electronics cool when using the oven) drives them mad. It could just run and make some noise, but no, it winds up and then shuts off repeatedly. They've had the service people check it and have been told that's the way they are.

We have a conventional glass top electric stove that we're nursing along until someone sorts induction out.
Gas ranges are not toxic. It's a scare tactic perpetuated by busy-body environmentalist who are looking for another dragon the slay. These are the same individuals who will say to never do things like sear steaks in the house because of the PM2.5 it generates. A properly functioning gas burner emits CO2 and very little if any CO. The amount of CO2 is insignificant in terms of degree of exposure.

I've read that some induction ranges do get a little noisy as the fan cools the electronics.
 
Gas ranges are not toxic. It's a scare tactic perpetuated by busy-body environmentalist who are looking for another dragon the slay. These are the same individuals who will say to never do things like sear steaks in the house because of the PM2.5 it generates. A properly functioning gas burner emits CO2 and very little if any CO. The amount of CO2 is insignificant in terms of degree of exposure.

I've read that some induction ranges do get a little noisy as the fan cools the electronics.
Plus if you’re that worried about the combustion products of gas then I’d think you would be equally concerned about the EMF from an induction cooktop.
 
Food for thought:
my induction stove boiled 7qts of water in 6min last night.
my previous gas stove on the largest burner was 10min+ for the same pan.
and also made the handles too hot to touch.

I like gas but in my tiny kitchen it would make the room Very warm. also took forever to heat small(er) pans.
or pots such as my 8qt spaghetti pot that is tall but not superwide.. you could have flames shooting out past the bottom of the pan.
still took forever to boil water.

Wasnt as bad in the 12qt full width pan but the induction still heats nearly twice as fast.
IIRC stove had a 10k or 12k burner. The biggest induction burner uses a max of 2000watt... efficiency at work.

I've never used an induction stove before, only seen them in the stores and shows so I've never gotten a chance to use them. Now that I think of it, I have used an electric kettle before and that boiled water super fast so maybe the electric stove I used was super old (like 90s white computer case turned yellow) so I'm assuming the new ones are much better.
 
I've never used an induction stove before, only seen them in the stores and shows so I've never gotten a chance to use them. Now that I think of it, I have used an electric kettle before and that boiled water super fast so maybe the electric stove I used was super old (like 90s white computer case turned yellow) so I'm assuming the new ones are much better.
Induction is a little different (electromagnetism vs resistance heat) and comparatively more expensive. The fact it operates on electricity is about the only thing it has in common with electric resistance.
 
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I don't think I'd buy a gas range at all. There are concerns about the (toxic) combustion products being released into room air. I seem to recall there being evidence of a higher rate of chronic respiratory problems in people who use gas stoves as well - which is exactly the concern.

And for the record, current induction stoves have disadvantages too. Friends have a high end (Bosch I think) induction stove and the wailing of the cooling fan (which keeps the electronics cool when using the oven) drives them mad. It could just run and make some noise, but no, it winds up and then shuts off repeatedly. They've had the service people check it and have been told that's the way they are.

We have a conventional glass top electric stove that we're nursing along until someone sorts induction out.
Please post some evidence concerning toxicity of gas ranges.

Frankly, it’s B-S. That mask you wore/wear durin the VID was far more toxic. Evidence is in the current ER numbers.
 
I don't think I'd buy a gas range at all. There are concerns about the (toxic) combustion products being released into room air. I seem to recall there being evidence of a higher rate of chronic respiratory problems in people who use gas stoves as well - which is exactly the concern.
That's a correlation, not causality.

You can have a room with bad ventilation and it would cause problem with old gas burner or kerosene burner, but that doesn't mean a newer cleaner burner in a well vented kitchen would cause problems.

FYI my family used kerosene burner in the kitchen before I entered elementary school, I remember sometimes the kitchen would smell like kerosene and sometimes my food would smell like it too. That's the "before low sulfur diesel days" and everyone talked about acid rain back then.
 
Gas ranges are not toxic. It's a scare tactic perpetuated by busy-body environmentalist who are looking for another dragon the slay. These are the same individuals who will say to never do things like sear steaks in the house because of the PM2.5 it generates. A properly functioning gas burner emits CO2 and very little if any CO. The amount of CO2 is insignificant in terms of degree of exposure.

I've read that some induction ranges do get a little noisy as the fan cools the electronics.
It's not a scare tactic. Think about what happens when you burn any fuel. You do get some carbon monoxide (which is not good) but that's not the major issue. With burning natural gas is you also get NO2 which is a known lung toxin. Here is one reliable source:


And as for @kschachn's question about EMFs, there's no need to worry. Yes electric fields do have an effect on living cells (which is part of the reason that bone fractures heal - because bone itself is a piezoelectric material that creates electrical fields when compressed). But I'm not aware of any good quality evidence that electric fields are harmful, and that question has been studied extensively.
 
It's not a scare tactic. Think about what happens when you burn any fuel. You do get some carbon monoxide (which is not good) but that's not the major issue. With burning natural gas is you also get NO2 which is a known lung toxin. Here is one reliable source:


And as for @kschachn's question about EMFs, there's no need to worry. Yes electric fields do have an effect on living cells (which is part of the reason that bone fractures heal - because bone itself is a piezoelectric material that creates electrical fields when compressed). But I'm not aware of any good quality evidence that electric fields are harmful, and that question has been studied extensively.
Again, as with many emissions it's the duration of exposure which matters. Check the citations. These studies are being used all the time to ban NatGas in residential homes. There could, maybe be an issue at the extremes in a home which is well built, but that's what range hoods are for. Poor people using nat gas ranges in a 20+ yr old leaky home don't have anything to worry about.
 
It's not a scare tactic. Think about what happens when you burn any fuel. You do get some carbon monoxide (which is not good) but that's not the major issue. With burning natural gas is you also get NO2 which is a known lung toxin. Here is one reliable source:


I read/quickly read the studies linked to that article and it seems like most of them concluded that despite the increase of pollutants, men were unaffected while women experienced "asthma like" symptoms at least once in the 30 days following. The only article that had any substantial tests IMO was this one. Here's the conclusion paragraph on that study.

Our results suggest that in homes using NGCBs without venting range hoods, a substantial proportion of occupants experience pollutant concentrations that exceed health-based standards and guidelines. Using simulations of Southern California households cooking at least once per week, we estimate that pollutant levels exceed ambient air quality standards for NO2 and CO in 55–70% and 7–8% of homes during a typical week in winter (Table 2). Approximately half of homes in California and 34% of homes nationally have natural gas cooking burners, and assuming that the critical parameters of pollutant emission rates from appliances, homes sizes, and cooking patterns have similar distributions throughout the state as occur in the SoCal cohort, we estimate through extrapolation that approximately 12 million and 1.7 million Californians routinely could be exposed to NO2 and CO levels, respectively, exceeding ambient air standards in a typical week in winter. Additional work is needed to estimate the frequencies at which air quality benchmarks are exceeded in the tens of millions of U.S. homes that have natural gas cooking burners.

The U.S. EPA and California outdoor health standards, NAAQS (U.S.EPA 2012b) and CAAQS (CARB 2010), respectively, are legally enforceable regulations. If outdoor concentrations exceed these standards in specific areas they are referred to as “nonattainment” areas. The health impacts of being in nonattainment are thought to be significant enough to warrant a wide array of fiscal and regulatory penalties to achieve compliance. Our model-based estimates suggest that during the winter in Southern California, 55–70% of homes that have and use natural gas burners without venting have indoor air pollution levels consistent with ambient outdoor levels in nonattainment areas.

The hazard posed by natural gas cooking burners can be mitigated substantially through the use of venting range hoods that capture cooking burner pollutants—as well as pollutants generated from cooking activities—at the point of emissions and exhaust them to the outdoors.
 
My sealed burner unit does heat the small pots unevenly, but the cookware I use accommodates for it. No way will I own an open burner. I'd be cleaning my life away at the rate other, nameless folks who consistently boil dinner over.
 
If anyone would like to research the health effects of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a good place to start would be the 198 original references in Chapter 36, "Nitrogen Dioxide", Environmental and Occupational Medicine, 2nd Edition, WN Rom, pp 503 - 517, 1992.

And yes, that book is 20 years old. So I expect there will be a similar number of references since 1992.
 
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Our gas range and stove burns propane which doesn't burn quite as cleanly as natural gas, but we also have a range hood that vents outside and use it when cooking. I think the building code should have a requirement of an outdoor venting range hood with a gas stove, seems silly not to? I can definitely tell when my wife hasn't turned on the vent fan, especially with a few burners going.
Our stove has 4 different sizes of sealed burner, so we can use small to large pans fine, although the smaller burners do lack some btu's if you put a big pot on them.
 
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