I have the 36" Wolf Dual Fuel / 6 Burner LP, Electric oven and could not be happier with it. We have had it for 3 years with 0 Zero problems. I LOVE the oven. It is truly a beast! One Thanksgiving I cooked 2 20Lbs. Turkeys at the same time and it only took ~ 2 hours with convection and the internal temp probe. Unbelievable, but true. They were the most juicy Turkeys I have ever cooked, and the next day the self-cleaning function worked perfectly. We have the sealed gas burners, and I would not have it any other way after cooking / cleaning the stove for a while. I am experienced with the open burners as I was a prep-chef for a French Restaurant in an earlier life. The look of closed top burners is IMO so much nicer, very clean and upscale instead of 100% Commercial look like the open top burners. It cleans up easily and looks like new after each use. Cookies come out perfect, my wife is the baker in the family and has cooked several >6 Wedding cakes (yes multi-layered)and Loves the oven too. Does it show that we Love our Wolf? I hope so. When we move we will leave it with the house, and purchase a new one for our next home. Same 36" DF, it does take a while for the oven to come up to heat, but it's worth the wait. Ron

My biggest fear with a hydronic system is that all systems will eventually leak. I'm assuming yours is going to be in the attic so even if its mounted with the proper drain pan and proper routing to a drain, your not going to see a leak until water drips from the ceiling because the leak is spraying or because the drain pan clogs. Wouldn't want it in my house. As far as "heat is heat" is concerned, the heat exchanger in a gas furnace is much hotter than the coil in a hydronic system or for that matter a heat pump system, so if the house starts out cold, gas will heat it faster. Once the house is warm it really doesn't matter. You should keep shopping though. I would get a bid on systems I liked from at least two different companies. They can vary greatly. Carrier and Trane make good dual fuel systems that qualify for tax credits as well. Because of where you live,you will probably never use the gas part of the system anyway. Don't know how much extra electricity your banking but you can also get an air handler with electric heat that is heat pump compatible so you wouldn't be venting burned gas fumes if part of your reason for going solar is to reduce your "carbon footprint". Again you'll probably never use the backup heat anyway. They gave you a quote for a 3 ton cooling system. Seems large for an 1100 sq foot home in your area. I'm also guessing since your into energy efficiency that you have good insulation and double paned argon filled windows. Did the contractor perform a heat load calculation like ryanhughes suggested? See what size the next contractor tries to sell you. When you know what size system you want, you can at least get ballpark bids from reputable companies over the phone or even on line.

area of country you live? electric rate? I personally think modulating furnaces are best suited for climates that have longer, frigid,wider range winter temps. as far as two stg condensers whether straight AC or HP, it is my opinion they are overkill and unnecessary for most homeowners/applications. Yes, they can provide more comfort and save on electric but you will get good savings/comfort from an AC or HP that has the following specs; 15SEER,12+EER,9HSPF you defintely want an air handler or furnace with a var speed blower. IMO

"Commercial bakeries use nothing but gas ovens." This is not true. If you are talking about bulk bakeries, they are more inclined to because it is often cheaper but they also have steam injectors to add humidity when needed. I know several specialty bakeries that use electric ovens. Many deck ovens in commercial kitchens are electric. I knew of a bakery that was called "the Electric Bakery". It really depends a lot on what they are baking. I know a baker that has specialty ovens for pies. This really has nothing to do with home ovens because they are a different breed anyway as they are expected to do many different things. "Dual fuel is excessively expensive, and overly complex for no benefit in performance ." Performance is different things to different people. They have different needs so there is no one size fits all. If I were selling appliances, the first thing would be to assess that person's needs and make individualized recommendations based on those needs. I most likely would never recommend ranges to begin with unless there was a compelling reason like space or cost issues or even a preference for "looks" over cooks. Pick out each component because it meets individual needs in the best way possible. As far as cost, you can buy electric ovens with features that have high utility for less than some gas ovens with limited features. Electric ovens can be complex, but so are our home computers and cars these days. This is not necessarily a bad thing. These ovens can have features that many consider helpful in how they use their ovens. It takes a computer board to coordinate fans, heating elements and tight temperature control. I love being able to control the direction of heat and fan speed in my oven. I can have air movement slow or fast to facilitate browning or not if I am baking a cake. It has a lot greater range of temperature, with or without the fan than many ovens gas or electric that cost a lot more. There is a learning curve with these features especially with the many choices something like Gaggenau or Miele give you. The combi oven is the king of control of the cooking environment but not in a range yet. The other side of the coin is some ovens have this figured out and others, not so much, so you have to read as many reviews as you can. To minimize risk if you want these features, buy the longest service agreement that you can. They can be difficult to evaluate and compare because a feature named the same name in two different brands can mean two different things. Even the term "dual fuel", in most ovens it means gas burners and an electric oven but 5 Star when they say dual fuel means a gas oven and electric oven together in the same range. You have to decide what is a benefit and what is a burden? No one answer. "could you please explain why all gas is fine" "All gas is fine." I might agree with that statement depending on how you use your oven but that in no way means they are the same and it in many cases gas is not the best choice. Gas and electric ovens are constructed differently. Because you have combustion for your heat source, another difference, gas ovens are vented more to remove products of combustion including water, so those products of combustion and humidity from food move out of the oven and into the kitchen. That may be good or bad depending on where you live, but how is that significant to cooking? It is much more difficult to keep added steam in a gas oven if you are doing that for bread or adding a pan of water for cheesecake. Because there is more of an air current, in a gas oven, this removes more moisture from the surface of what you are cooking. This inhibits starch gelatinization during the first part of baking so inhibits rise and changes the appearance of what you are baking. On the other hand, because it evaporates moisture from the surface and allows it to heat more quickly, the Maillard and other browning chemical reactions take place more quickly. This is why meat, vegetables and even baked goods brown more quickly. Will you notice? A lot of people say they don't. I have baked in gas and electric ovens for over 50 years and I used to attribute differences in outcomes to different ovens rather than a difference in fuel but with the many books and websites that have come out on food science, you can see the rationale for the differences in outcome that cooks report in cooking/baking forums. It was kind of a "aha" moment to put these comments with the science. All of the information coming out challenges what used to be conventional wisdom and yet it might be hard to see if you are not baking the exact same recipe side by side. You do see the same observations cooks make repeatedly in terms of cooking on cooking and baking forums and people seem to notice the difference more coming from electric to gas but you do see the occasional comment about excess moisture in some electric ovens when they are coming from gas. Most advertising literature and websites about ovens actually say a gas oven provides moist heat and electric dry but they are only looking at the heat source and not the oven as a whole and the process of cooking which provides a lot of moisture to the oven chamber. Another difference is that there are more and more features being loaded into ovens now as noted above, mostly electric but sometimes gas too. Some electric ovens have added steam. Combi ovens are very useful in their ability to control humidity and really make the case for buying ovens separate from the range top instead of having to pick the priority of the burners or the oven. I am not a fan of the current trend of hiding the bake element in electric ovens. Sometimes with pies, you need that bottom element exposed. It used to be you could put a tray under the element to catch spills. If you put it on the bottom now, it will melt. Some other things to consider. gas broilers are of two types. There is the traditional gas broiler, but they are not very good. Many prostyle gas ovens have an infrared broiler. They are very hot and even, but can be small. They are great for a couple of steaks but not so much trays of appetizers or broiling larger amounts. How big is the oven? Do you want a quick preheat or need room for full commercial sheets? Look at the rack size for usable space and size top to bottom. What is the temperature range, lowest and highest? What are the increments that you can set your temperature? 25F or 5F? Ovens are not an easy choice these days but I think it helps at least some people to realize the differences so you can at least make a somewhat informed decision.