The gas jet, sometimes called a "spud" or "orifice" sits between the valve and the feed tube that supplies the burner. Its job is to increase the speed of the gas flow right before it passes by the mixture "shutters" resulting in a venturi effect. At max open valve, the orifice serves to limit the gas flow to achieve optimum mixture and pressure at the burner ports. If the orifice is too big, the gas flow can blow itself out at the burner. All of this is a balance. Burner port angle, if mostly horizontal, will just shoot the flames out from under the skillet if you turn the burner up too high. If the burner ports are too few, or too small in diameter, then an overly large orifice will cause "jetting" at the burner and could result in poor mixture/inefficient burn, or even extinguishing of the flame. On my RCS, the burner was designed for double duty, either as a 22K burner, when paired, with a #47 drill size orifice, or as an 18K burner with a #48 drill size orifice. I did some experimenting and settled on a 46 gauge orifice, which yields me around 24K BTU/hr performance and still a decent blue flame and great performance with my cookware. It is important to note that the Bluestar burner configuration is like a commercial unit in that the gas ports in the burner arms are angled up toward the pan and not horizontally out away from the center. I get a nice pile of fire when I light up the big boy, it rocks a wok about as well as I could ask, and it will never heat a pan as fast as Gary's induction cooktop. So it is always good to keep things in perspective! As far as the griddle, grill burner performance, I simply cannot answer without seeing the range and examining the flame pattern. I do know you do not want to increase the spread of flame outside the design limits of the system without a careful evaluation of danger. Are there wires in the flame path? Gas piping? Plastic, insulation, frequent contact surfaces you will burn yourself on. The list is endless. I am comfortable engineering stuff around my house because I have a long history of doing that. All I would say is that if you are interested in hotrodding your range, do it carefully, in small steps, and make sure that what you are doing 1. Helps. 2. Won't burn your house down.

The hood is a Monogram that we have had for about five years. It used to reside above our Jennair slide-in 30" range that the Bluestar replaced. You can put a Bluestar in an island fine, at least according to me, who has done it without problems. That is why the Bluestar is available with "island trim" I guess, which is what we have. Our hood is a 350cfm job we bought because we liked the style the most back when we bought it, not for a specific cfm to match anything. We had already planned to reuse the hood (repositioned) in our new layout well before I found the Bluestar. In any case, the 350cfm 36" hood mounted above a 36" Bluestar is a little sketchy, in my estimation. But it does work fine for most chores. When I decide to blacken fish indoors then things can get a little exciting, but most of the time it works okay. The thing is I don't have room for a bigger hood while retaining the wall cabinets to the right of it. The doors wouldn't open if the hood were wider. This is one of the side benefits of having a relatively small house, I guess. But here's the thing. I live in the desert. I have a 6800cfm rated evaporative cooler that will, in theory, completely replace all the air in the house in less than 2 minutes. So this is not as big a deal for me as it might be for somebody living in a pressurized condo in Minneapolis. If things get smoky, I turn on the big boy (at least from about Mar. 1 to Nov. 15 or so) and all my problems go out in smoke. But to distill this reply, I would recommend getting at least a 42" hood to go over the 36" range and I would get as many cfms as you can get. I think they recommend 800 and that would not suck in my estimation, or would suck better, rather. But if you are in a pinch and don't mind the odd waft of smoke in the air from time to time and the occasional fire alarm going off, you can definitely make do with less.

mmme - I'm very sorry you're experiencing disappointing performance for this important appliance. A couple more thoughts - my apologies again if they're too basic and you've already thought of them - just trying to cover all the bases: 1. When I'm boiling any quantity of liquid and I'm in a hurry, I'll often split it between two pots on two burners - if it's water we're talking about, it isn't necessary to wash the second pot so no extra cleanup. 2. A possible way to improve stir-fry/saute performance on a lower BTU burner is to use a cast iron skillet and let it sit on the burner on high for 5 or more minutes till it's really smokin hot. Do not put the oil in the pan beforehand or it may hit its smoke point; add the oil very carefully right before adding the food which will normally cool the pan enough that the smoke point isn't reached. Because cast iron is a great conductor and retains heat well, you can get very good searing/browning during those first 3-4 minutes (after that not as good but a lot of times it's enough to get your desired results). If you happen to be using the oven at the same time the cast iron skillet can be pre-heated in the oven and will then only take a few extra minutes on the burner to get good and hot (please remember not to grab the handle with your bare hand after it's come out of the oven - been there/done that/not fun!) 3. Would you want to consider, down the road & depending on space & layout, purchasing a single induction burner to take care of those times when you really need the extra speed & BTUs? Best wishes - hope at least one of these was helpful. RE Whoever heard of making pasta or corn on the cob with a covered pot of water? You don't have to make the pasta or corn with a covered pot, just use the cover to speed up the boiling process (which is generally what takes the most time and energy). This helps insure that you are cooking with closer to the same amount of liquid you started out with and does also save a little energy & help keep your kitchen from getting as hot and humid in the summer.

Either combination would be more than fine for typical home cooking - the combination of burners is more a matter of personal preference than anything. Two things you do want to watch. One you've already identified: how much of a hit do you take in the conversion to LP? 10% is typical but some models take a much bigger hit. You want to know how many BTU's/hour you're going to get with the fuel you're going to burn. The second thing is assuming these are sealed burners, you want to look at the width of the burners. Wider burners can mean the flame gets wider than your pans on higher settings, making those BTU's useless. Also, be aware that in swithing to gas you get a lot of good stuff - great controllability and a handy visual indicator. But boiling a big pot of water is typically *not* a gas burner's strong point - in other words, you may find yourself satisfied with everything *but* the speed of boiling, even with 18K BTUs. If you want the best of all worlds, you might want to consider induction if your budget allows.