After reading my saga below, I want to ask you cooks what you might try to do in my situation. The options I see so far are to get several flame tamers of some kind or attempt to return this cooktop.

I had to buy a new gas cooktop for propane to replace my glass top KitchenAid unit that I broke (long annoying story, and never again with glass top). In general, this new, less expensive Whirlpool unit actually performs better out of the box than the old KA. Presumably, the propane converted engineering takes second place to that for the majority of natural gas units. The new unit has high burner flames that all look better than the KA before some special adjustments and lower to higher flame change covers a wider range of knob movement.

However, the lowest or simmer position on all burners (including a special micro simmer burner) with the low flame adjusters in all valve stems bottomed out is ~ three times too high, and I can't reach a simmer setting on any burner. BTW, the old KA had enough simmer valve adjustment to allow perfect low flame settings. Whirlpool sent a local tech who looked at the flames and said, 'well, that's usually what you can expect and its OK' (which is what he told Whirlpool) and then immediately said 'we try to set the low flame to the top of the burner cap so the flame won't blow out accidently'. I pointed out that the flames actually reached approx. three times above the burner cap but he said he couldn't do anything. Whirlpool refuses to help me.

This cooktop is essentially new and I think Lowes Home Improvement would probably take it back. However, this unit was actually at the bottom end of cooktop prices ranges and it actually has rugged grates that one might hope for on reasonably expensive units. Maybe the price is low because the engineers screwed up. DW wants to keep all our appliances white, which limits some options. Before I bought this unit I had looked at e-bay and craigslist too. I didn't find a good fit just now.

That seems to leave me with working with a couple of flame tamers. I suppose it is the reasonable solution, but having more than one kicking around at a time seems a bit much. It seems to me that almost all my cooking ends up with several pots on low, although some is just low boiling that I suppose doesn't really matter. The gas would be wasted with the boil or the flame tamer. Actually, I have already adjusted the micro burner by replacing its orifice with a super small one that essentially puts the low setting in spec but makes it otherwise useless, but since I usually need it low, that's OK and I probably need one less flame tamer.

Having typed that last paragraph, I guess I am just going to have to accept a flame tamer or two always setting on the cooktop. Have any of you had similar issues? Do you mind using flame tamers? Do you have any ideas about choosing convenient ones? Any other ideas?