Electric Range vs Smoothtop Cooktop?
prairiemoon2 z6b MA
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
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Debbi Branka
8 years agoNothing Left to Say
8 years agoRelated Discussions
Size and Placement of Electric Range/Cooktop Elements
Comments (2)I've had my range for only a couple weeks, but already I've discovered some burner issues. My burners were advertised as: Dual 12/9, Dual 9/6 and 2 - 6", and 6" warmer. Yet, the actual diameters are: Dual 11 1/4 and 8 1/4, Dual 10 and 6 5/8, and the 2 - 6 5/8, warmer is 7". I haven't used the largest 12" burner yet. I have a couple of 12" skillets, but the bottoms are much smaller as they taper down. And the 6" burner is too small for my Reverware perculator. It's odd the 2 9" burners differ so much in size. One thing that I wish I had was a triple element. That's because I find myself doing 95% of my cooking in the front. The back burners seem like a bit of a stretch, and there's not much room between the pot edge and the control panel. A triple and dual element in the front would give me 5 options of matching pan and burner sizes without the longer reach. HTH. My brain is still muddled from all the different appliance features! Good luck....See MoreElectric Smoothtop Range
Comments (18)"Electric smooth tops are not difficult to clean at all. After dinner, when the stove has cooled a bit, sprinkle baking soda on the dirtier parts of the stovetop. Take a washcloth dipped in hot soapy wash water and lay it out flat on top of the baking soda and let sit 10 -20 minutes. You have to use enough baking soda so that it doesn't melt away but stays kind of thick and chunky. After sitting for a bit, gather the baking soda into a pile and kind of use the thick pile to scrub the top. Baking soda has some abrasive qualities to scour but does not scratch glass. Clean baking soda off and rinse with micro fiber cloth to remove all residue. Easy and cheap. Never have scratches. Many natural products clean way better than store bought cleaners. Look on you tube - lots of videos showing just this." Now compare the above to how hvtech42 cleans his induction cooktop: "1. Wipe with paper towel" Frankly, I'd much rather just take a paper towel even as I'm cooking then do what laurieich has to do to clean her cooktop. Sorry I don't have that much free time to bother with all that. Sounds almost like how my grandmother used to clean her stove and she's been dead for over 50 years....See MoreMost reliable brand for electric smoothtop range?
Comments (11)Induction ranges have come down in price. But they probably still are noticeably more expensive than resistive heating coils. Electric service should be about the same for both technologies. Radiation is a non-issue. Magnetic fields are harmless to people (in fact, we don't react to them at all), and the range of magnetic fields is really short. This is very different from electro-magnetic radiation, which can be dangerous depending on frequency range (visible light and infrared is usually harmless, X-Ray not so much, radio frequency might or might not). It's unfortunate that these two physical phenomena have similar names, even though they are really not at all comparable. Buzzing is a problem with many stand-alone single-burner induction appliances. It shouldn't be a problem with induction ranges. But of course there are outliers. Smoothtop electric ranges are easier to clean than traditional coils, but they tend to be even less responsive. Some people love them, others hate them. Make sure you know which one you really prefer. If you like to cook, then gas or induction is very likely a big step up. Gas doesn't need specific types of pots, but induction usually does. Some of your old pots might be reusable, but most likely not all of them. Reliability is a gamble with any modern electric range. Even smoothtops or coils have enough electronics these days, that there always is a higher risk of failure compared to older ranges. I personally love cooking with gas, but I appreciate the benefits of induction. If gas wasn't available in my house, induction would be what I'd get. Can't make recommendations for specific models though....See MoreGas vs electric ranges--had never considered electric, but now...
Comments (43)Another take on the induction question with a little sprinkle of humor. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/induction-cooking-emf-magnitude-vs-other-things-missus-is-a-bit-concerned/ Tim says, Ugh... If she's worried about cancer... dump her now? There's no convincing someone like that, to understand statistics and significance. At least that I've heard of. If you're looking for the opinion of an EE, I would gladly give you my opinion on the subject -- if you'd like it in writing, I can even sell your wife a certificate saying as much! Maybe that wouldn't help. I don't know. What are we talking about, anyway? Cooktops aren't always-on. They're either off until turned on, or pulsing infrequently to check if a pot is present. The RMS EMF at the surface is not very large either way, when not actively heating something. When heating, it's only large under the work being heated. EMF drops off rapidly with distance. If your wife is so strange that she finds it enjoyable to read books while laying over the cooktop, I might be concerned, but only for mental health reasons, not for EMF reasons. Or if shoving her head towards a pot that's being heated, I would be more concerned for safety reasons, and then mental health reasons... There are biological effects of EMF, but not at these field strengths. Not by orders of magnitude. The primary effect is simply dumb old heating. Diathermy machines, microwave ovens, and the military's ADS, operate on this mechanism. There is no biological effect beyond heating (obviously, too much heat and you cause burns, but that's not unique to EMF). Strong pulsed fields can induce voltages in neural tissue (transcranial magnetic stimulation), which do have direct neural effects, but these are temporary. Anything that produces fields with too little energy to cause noticeable heating, or pulse peaks strong enough to cause noticeable induction, is completely and utterly inconsequential. Example: ESD can have quite large (peak) EMF, but is over very quickly, and delivers very little energy (on a human scale). (Anyway, sparks are well known to cause people to involuntarily jump or twitch. But again, that's just a neural stimulation thing, nothing more.)...See Moreprairiemoon2 z6b MA
8 years agoNothing Left to Say
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agotea4all
8 years agoNothing Left to Say
8 years agopractigal
8 years agoprairiemoon2 z6b MA
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoDebbi Branka
8 years agoprairiemoon2 z6b MA
8 years agoNothing Left to Say
8 years agocpartist
8 years agoalexamorrie
8 years agoEric
8 years agofunkycamper
8 years agolast modified: 8 years ago
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