I purchased a wolf dual fuel 48" 9 months ago and after several service calls, Wolf did a buy back on the range. It was kind of strange, I would have been ok with another range but they did not want to switch it out. They were very nice, tried to service it but never really looks at the internals, instead would send a chef out here to cook in it and troubleshoot it. My issue was mainly the convection. Cook on one rack, no issues, cook on all of them like cookies and extremely uneven cooking from top to bottom and back to front. Not satisfied. Hated the lack of rolling racks, I find the racks hard to pull out. Had the double griddle. Fantastic to cook on but the grease catcher does not catch grease, instead it fills up, overflows underneath and makes quite the mess, even when the catcher is not full....they even mentioned that it is a design flaw. The actual service help after was good in most respects, would I buy another wolf? maybe some day, but not that range for sure. Also, took forever to heat up and boiling a pot of water took too long for such a beautiful unit. I am now purchasing a capital culinarian...hoping for much better results.....

Posted by trevorlawson I think its fair to say that the CC will out cook a thermadore due to open burners. Fair to say based on what? Please describe what this means. The high end is 22K BTUs-pretty close to Capital. This is the rating for the heat output, nothing to do with open or closed. The low end is 375 BTUs. We don't know what Capital has for that. I am sure everyone knows what I sell. What I sell does not detract from the fact that open burners outperform sealed burners. The difference between open and sealed burners is significant nothing nominal about it. We tested a wolf range with caps on and caps off using same pan same water side by side at the same time, the burner with caps off boiled water over 23% fast..... that is significant Here is the video. Outperform would be a mischaracterization of this "test". I see performance as more multidimensional than putting the most heat in the center of a pan. If you had a wider pan, or changed the metal it was made of, or what you are cooking, your results would be different. This falls under the category of showmanship rather than anything scientific. How can you say this-"the burner with caps off boiled water over 23% fast."without any supporting data? You are right it is not how big the burners are but how the burner delivers heat to the CENTER of the pan, so the base of the pan gets evenly hot. Sealed burner send vast majority of the heat to the outside of the pan, open burners send the heat to the center of the pan. Please explain using the principals of heat transfer how delivering heat to the center of a pan is allowing the base of the pan to get evenly hot. If you have a ring of heat on the bottom of the pan, heat will travel in both directions from that ring to heat the pan. The center will receive heat from more directions and heat quicker, until it comes to equilibrium, than the outside so it is optimum to have a ring with the maximum heat more towards the outside of the pan than the inside. It is much harder to get heat to the part of the pan outside of the ring. A sealed ring burner flame pattern is only slightly wider than an open ring burner, a little more if you have it wide open. If you use a pan with reasonably good heat transfer like copper or aluminum, the burner shape doesn't really matter as much, but I wouldn't want the heat in the middle of the pan. The only way I would see heat in the middle of a pan as a benefit is if I were using a very small pan or a wok. I use everything from a 7 inch pan to make caramel with no stirring to a 14 inch aluminum pan on my sealed burners. For any pan less than 7 inches, I have a "small pan burner" I can make fried potatoes in that 14 inch pan with even color all the way across. I use cast iron if I need a lot of heat as in searing meat.

Our steam oven In the 48 inch model was leaking then stopped working. We finally had it replaced. New model came. And it leaks too! If you get that Thermador with the steam I don’t think that steam oven will last. They could never figure out how to stop the leak to replaced it. Needless to say we aren’t pleased the new model leaks too. Very frustrating with what seems to be faulty engineering.

We purchased a Thermador 48” Dual Fuel range with 6 burners and an induction unit and double oven. Model PRD486WIGU. originally wanted a Wolf, but was told it was going to be about 9 to 12 months. Contractor suggested Airport Appliance who said they could get Thermador in 4 months which at the time would accomodate our remodel schedule. Turned out Thermador took 9 to 12 months, depending on the appliance, to deliver all appliances. Rude Thermador Customer service, hours wait to talk to someone, required 100% payment upon order. had our $25,000 whole time. Airport Appliance not much better. Lied about delivery times and deposit amount. Have had 3 service calls on range in first 6 months with burner issues. In my previous home we had a 48” Thermador cook top which we were pleased with which also influenced our decision to go with Thermador again, but never again! I dont recommend Airport Appliance either. Good luck however you decide.