Oh I know about the parts tucked all over the house! I have a grill and griddle and several spare ceramic hob thingies (it's electric) strewn about. Apparently it can do all sorts of things if I'm willing to ignore the fact that it's not ducted and just dumps vapors into the crawl space... I don't know who you'd want to repair it--probably an appliance guy--but it does sound a little bit sketchy. If you could find a serial number sticker somewhere, it might have a date and you'd be able to find a manual. It's probably worth dropping a little money on, just to be sure you're not about to get electrocuted. My JA range is actually pretty good (although I'm not a huge fan of electric cooktops). The oven is really good.

I have Monogram, but they're all pretty similar, and very simple. Jenn-Air and KitchenAid are Whirlpool, but they're almost identical to the Monogram which is GE. :) As far as I can tell the Jenn-Air and KitchenAid are completely identical to each other. The moist/dry lever slides a piece of metal over or away from the vent holes. There is a hollow area between the inner surface and the front panel, whether factory or custom. I assume, though don't know for sure (where' Kas?) that the steam condenses in the relatively cooler hollow. On mine there are slits in the bottom of the hollow. Of course, that means that the moisture will be venting right into the drawerfront below, but there isn't enough moisture to matter for most things. It's really more about crisp vs. spongy. Sometimes you want one, sometimes the other. The air inside gets very dry. Retaining the moisture from the food for things that are supposed to stay soft could be important, especailly if they're held uncovered for quite some time. OTOH, venting the little bit of steam when you want crisp to stay crisp is really useful too. It's not perfect. If your crisp thing is like a waffle, which is crisp on the surface, but still moist in the middle, it's not going to stay as crunchy as right out of the waffle iron. OTOH, if you have soft crackers you can recrisp them. They're not so moist that they'll soggify in their own dampness. Does that make sense? It's really very similar to how there are some things that are moist inside, like crusty bread, that you wouldn't put in a plastic bag because it would get soft. That's the kind of thing that you don't want to seal in a closed up warming drawer either, so you open the vent.

We had our 5 burner Jenn Air JX3 (the newest) gas downdraft installed three weeks ago. Here is my unbiased review. We love the profile; the grates are a perfect height, not too clunky, but high enough so you can see what the flames are doing. We love the layout of the burners. The knobs are high quality. The downdraft works much better than we anticipated. We had originally ruled out the downdraft because of slight pulling on the flame when we tried a showroom model. But, after months of looking at several possibilities, we went with the Jenn Air. (The cost was considerably less for us than if we had to go with a telescoping downdraft installation; my husband feared that a telescoping downdraft would stop working and we'd be stuck with a particular cut out in brand new counters; we pulled out an old oak hood that held a lighting fixture and fell in love with the openness and light so did not want to install a huge hood no matter how stylish; our cooktop is in a peninsula, and we did not want to change the footprint; etc. etc.) We knew that we were making a ventilation compromise, but for our needs, the downdraft is actually working really well. If you sear sirloins on a regular basis, this probably wouldn't be the right choice. Now, here is the downside (no pun intended). One of the igniters didn't work properly upon installation, and this created a gas odor. After a few days, the grate for the largest burner started to chip off large chunks of the enamel coating. And I mean large. After another few days, a chip appeared on the downdraft grate. After a few more days, the downdraft motor stopped working. It then started up again after we tried it about two hours later, and it has never presented a problem after the service technician came out and saw that our installer hadn't fulled taped the vent tubing. We fixed that, and it seems that the motor was working too hard because of this "hole." The amazing part of what must sound like a real downer to someone reading this review is how incredibly efficient, fast and apologetic Jenn-Air's customer service has been. They immediately sent out a technician to replace the igniter. Problem solved. I already told you about the vent "hole" which the same technician returned to discover. Problem solved. They have send replacement grates which I have not yet used. Hopefully problem solved. So, we hope that the worst just happened in one painful "Oh my God what piece of junk did we just spend $1,700 plus installation and gas line moving costs of $675 on" swoop, and that we will now just enjoy our really sleek, even cooking, multi btu'd and actually really fun cooktop. Can I wholeheartedly say, "Oh yeah, you should go with the new Jenn-Air"? Well. . . . Only if you are a patient non-hysteric for whom the pluses will far far far outweigh the possible issues. We are, strangely enough, happy with our purchase now that the kinks have been worked out.

Overall, I'd say I'm pleased with the unit for the couple months we've owned it. Caveat, it was the only refrigerator I looked at simply because I essentially stole it from the Sears Outlet (returned custom order). Had I paid retail, it possible I might be more critical regarding it's performance. I'm not sure, but I wanted to throw that possible bias out there. Layout and construction seem solid. Door hinges look and feel stout. The adjustable glass shelving in the refrigeration seem very stable and are well finished. The drawers inside the refrigerator are a good size; I'd like it if top drawers had the LED lighting like the bottom as I don't get as much ambient light through the top of the drawer/bottom shelf as I'd like. Maybe it wouldn't bother me if the bottom drawers weren't illuminated so well in comparison, but they are so it does a little. It's our first bottom freezer, so I don't really know how to compare it. I think it fits more than our previous side by side. It's definitely easier to take stock of everything. There is the large drawer that is divided into three sections, an ice drawer for the ice maker, and another drawer next to the ice. The ice maker and other drawer both slowly retract if you let go of them, which is kind of slick but probably unnecessary. No crystals (other than the time my wife didn't close the drawer all the way overnight) or weird smells. I can't really comment on the sound levels since I have it installed into an open stud frame. It's not bad, the noise seems higher in frequency than I remember our last but lower in level. I don't know whether it will increase or decrease when we do the final installation. Either way, I don't see it as being an issue for us. I feel I can comment on the ice maker. You definitely notice when it is filling up and emptying cubes, but they're short, infrequent disturbances. Hope that helps.