Kitchenmonkey -- in one of your other threads, you mentioned you had an existing stove with an 18.6k power burner and were looking at maybe buying a friend's Wolf AG range. Did you get a chance to check out using your wok on that range? If so, how did it compare to your existing range? That info might help us provide a better answer to your questions here because we would have a better frame of reference for how to explain this to you. Traditional wok cooking uses a rather narrowly spread flame. As lazy_gardens explained -- the idea is to aim the heat at the bottom third of the wok. You've apparently been using a major brand stove with an 18.6k power burner that probably throws the flames to a much wider area. (Maybe it doesn't?) Some folks will tell you that this is "all wrong" and that you are some kind of ignorant cretin for not doing it "the right way", but who cares about those kinds of opinions if you like the food you've been making? You asked what does open burner mean. Well, it can mean a lot of things, but not all open burners are created the same. What people are talking about here (in this context), they are talking about a burner that is in a star or ring shape that sits in a open well allowing air to flow up from all around the burner. This tends to give a more concentrated flame and, of course, means that stuff you spill can go down inside the range. (The brands mentioned above typically have pull-out trays to catch spillage and make it relatively simple to clean out the interior). There are, of course, other kinds of open burners that tend to look and work like the sealed burners you are probably used to seeing. A "sealed" burner sits in a closed well or pan so that spills generally won't go down inside the range. The flame spreads can wider to a whole lot wider. You asked about whether a 20k btu burner is hotter than a 15k btu burner. Well, undertand the btu-ratings just tell you how much gas is being burned. To figure out what is hotter you have to ask: hotter for what? A big tri-ring burner on full power can put a lot of heat into thebase of a big pot, like 20-quart canning kettle/stock pot with a 13" base. That is a lot of heat for boiling big quantities of water, for example. If you put a 3-quart sauce pan on that same burner -- which may have a six inche base --- most of the heat will be going outside the saucepan and around it. That 20k-btu burner isn't putting 20k btu into the smaller pan. The advantage of a tri-ring burner is that you can turn down the gas and maybe use the center ring to get the saucepan to boil, but you using maybe 9k-btu to do it. So, when would a 16K btu burner "outperform" a 22k btu burner for the wok cooking you want to do? Well, if you want to do traditional "bottom third heating" when the 16k-btu burner that puts the majority of the flames on the bottom third of your wok may be better for you than a 22k btu burner spreads it wider. OTOH, if you want a wider flame spread, as you likely are getting with the 18.6k btu burner on that major brand range, the the smaller burner may not be what you want. Some of these differences will vary with how big is the wok you've using to get the results you like. I believe you said something in your other thread about making smaller quantities of food. Consider that a 15k btu open burner on a Blue Star RCS range may give you everything you want where 22k btu burner might be more heat over a wider area than you want. If you've got a really potent burner, it can be a very short trip from char to charcoal. So, back to that Wolf range you mentioned in your other thread. If you test it out and like the food from your wok on its 15k-btu burner better than what you've been getting with that unnamed major brand range's 18.6k btu burner, you figured out something very useful to you. If you conclude that you don't like the results from that Wolf burner as much or better, then you've figured out that a larger sealed burner style range isn't going to give you what you want and you can start considering spending $3500 to $3800 for Blue Star or AR. Something else to consider. If you decide that you really do want massive huge amounts of wok cooking power, and your kichen has 240v outlet in it, maybe what you really want is a 3500-watt concave induction wok burner. When you factor in the relative efficiency of induction heating (84% to 94% of the energy goes into the pan) versus gas burners (only about 33% of the heat actually goes into the pan), the induction burner may be the equivalent of 36,000 BTU gas burner. Plus the induction wok burner is specfically designed to put a whole-lotta-heat on the lower third of a standard sized wok. Cooktek makes 2500 and 3500 watt induction burners. (Actual full-on commercial products if that turns your crank.) Last time I checked, I think the street price was around $1700 from the likes of Katom.com. A lot less expensive than buying a whole new range just to get one wok burner. This post was edited by JWVideo on Thu, Jul 24, 14 at 21:28

I know that in cooktop over oven cases there are sometimes conflicts between where the one unit has its fan, the other has its power, etc., etc., so that they conflict. Manufacturers will make certain of their ovens and cooktops compatible so that they can be used together. That's what the marine/rv units and all in ones have--they're build so that the pieces don't screw each other up. There's another problem, though, if you're talking rangetop. Most gas tops require a certain amount of air circulation space underneath, but besides that, they also require access to the electrical plug, and also access to the gas shut off. I suppose you could put those behind the drawers, but in that case, why couldn't you put the cooktop over the drawers to start with? I think your situation is a great candidate for magnetic induction. Have you looked at that? You can only use steel or iron cookware, but you have similar control to gas, plus features like fast water boiling and (on some units) programmable elements and/or autoshutoff countdown timers. Best of all though, when it's not in use you can use your cooktop as extra counterspace. Even while you're cooking, since only the pot gets hot, rather than the cooktop, you can put your cuttingboard, potholder, or whatever right there on the cooktop. You could put in a 30" or 36" cooktop and never miss the counter. Some, like Miele, are very shallow and don't require a lot of underneath space. I think it's maybe a few inches from the top of the counter, or about an inch from the bottom of the unit. These shallow ones usually require a little back of cabinet air space, but so do the fridges, and they might be able to share the space, if there were enough cool air circulation back there. That might raise your counter just a bit, but some of us do that on purpose anyway. That said, I agree with Palimpsest, that a 24" wide, tall fridge makes sense, and would be much easier.

If the company you chose has a good reputation and a history of happy customers then it may be a matter of miscommunication, where each party is 15 percent off in understanding what the other is saying. Sometimes that just happens. And when it happens each party gets irritated. I think for customers it feels like we are staring at a black box in terms of the actual building process. We don’t know what we don’t know. Four days, for example, is not a long turn around time to get an estimate on a counter, because the shop needs the specs from the contractor first and then someone on their end needs to sit down and do the math and a rough drawing and get the bid back to the contracter. In my case one stone .outfit took a week to reply, another took two weeks. And maybe the designer is frustrated, thinking they’d done all this work to get you the price in a timely manner, what do you care about the details? It is a good price btw, i would thank the person for their fast reply (despite the rude All Caps thing) and ask where I should go the view the material. You don’t know what they’ve found for you until you actually see it. Re In picking a slab at the stone yard, the people there mark your selection with your name. In my case I took a pix of the slab and the inventory number while at the yard. What you pick on-site should be what you get. I would then send a cheerful note to the project manager with the inventory number and how you are looking forward to your counters. I did a succession of fairly major projects ( kitchen remodel, rebuild of corner of house and basement, replacement of fencing, and deck, gutters, HVAC, appliances, flooring for the entire house, installation of new sub panels, and rewiring for kitchen, replacement of lighting fixtures interiors and exterior, etc. It involved multiple subcontractors. My take away was this: most of these people are working on multiple projects and when you leave them a message their first thought is “is it on fire?” If there isn’t anything on fire and if you sent a page of questions then they will take care of any parts that seem sensible to them for that stage of the project then wait a couple of days and send some laconic message that seems completely opaque. It doesn’t mean things aren't on track or that stuff isn't happening. If you stick with these people then focus on your part of it - it’s fair to ask when they need your selections, and then get them the information they need. If the job is now slated to start in late July and they have the cabinets onsite then, to their mind, the job is “on the calendar“ I.e. it’s a happening thing. That is their reality and their understanding of the process. Nothing so far says they are going to flit out of town or refuse to supply soapstone instead of quartz. My suggestion would be to keep things amicable, keep good records, politely stick to your choices, and see how it goes.

This site is awesome. Timely conversation, as our designer recommended we move our range from a peninsula (that will become an island) to an outside wall, for better function. It is a GE Cafe dual fuel 30 inch range with the island trim, put in just over 3 years ago. After finding this thread, found an online install information, with the only recommendation to be 2 1/2 inches from the wall in the back and 3 inches clearance on the sides, and they had no recommendations for the wall behind the stove otherwise. I called GE and the service department there confirmed that this island trim oven was ok to use on a wall counter, and that to just follow code for the wall behind it. No recommendations other than the 2 1/2 inches from the back. I discussed this with our designer, who had just recommended only 24 inch counters, and the quartz backsplash, who was pretty noncommital about needing any changes. When I did say I cook sourdough bread at least twice a week, with 500 degree ovens for warmup, she said to get tile or real stone, but didn't need to change the counter depth as the tile was the fireproofing. It will be fairly easy for us to deepen the counter about 3 inches, I will just need to have a 30 inch sink rather than a 33 inch sink on the counter that will now be 3 inches less wide. But that will be just me and our countertop/cabinet group, not sure if it is worth it to convince our designer of what is common sense to me. Now we get to work on backsplashes. This range has the simmer and smaller burners in the back, with the larger speed boil burners in the front, so not sure what the fireproof wall in the back needs to be.