"Post" Pandemic Kitchen Reno, 48" Dacor Rangetop Alternatives?

last year

We started our kitchen reno in 2019 and got almost half way and had to put it off due to the pandemic. We managed to replace our 50+yr old Thermadore electric stovetop with a 36" 6-Burner Thor Gas Cooktop.

Functionally is has been pretty good. No real complains. The stainless steel scratches very easily, but otherwise is very easy to clean. Biggest complaint is that ALL of the writing by the knobs has worn off, and the finish is starting to come off the knobs. It's maybe a year old.

Before the pandemic I was looking at the Dacor 48" Rangetop (DTT48M876LS) with 6-Burners and no griddle. We have a large family and often cook meals for the holidays for extended family. We use large pots and pans, and will have 3-4 going fairly regularly, and during holidays will use all 6 burners. Right now it's very difficult to have two large pans going at once. They will hit each other and/or have to be offset, etc. We have also ended up with some really hot handles. Thankfully most of my stuff is cast iron/steel so nothing melted. That is why the Dacor appealed to us so much with the really wide cooking areas. We don't really care about the griddle, I have a cast iron grill/griddle that we lay over two of the burners now. Works great!

Unlike most of the other things I've looked at, Dacor's prices haven't gone up considerably. But many other things have so we need to adjust our budget accordingly and make some hard choices. The Rangetop was my baby. I'm not a professional cook, but I DO enjoy cooking and having the right tools makes the job easier and more enjoyable. My 13yr old daughter has learned to cook on our gas cooktop and enjoys cooking as well.

What are some reasonable alternatives without taking TOO far of a step down. My wife likes the Zline Autograph Porcelain, but I think she likes the stainless/gold look. I think we want to stick to sealed burners since SOME of us (glancing at wife and kids) aren't very careful when they are cooking and drop things all over burners. I prefer a rangetop over a cooktop because I feel like the knobs up top take away from cooking area. As much of a techie as I am, I think most connected appliances are a waste of money, so I could care less about that. Budget ideally something in the $4000 ballpark. Unfortunately I think that eliminates Bluestar, Viking, Wolf and Thermador, which are usually the recommended brands.

What I have found is:

Zline - 6 burners, 4x2 configuration with griddle between

Fisher & Paykel - 8 burners

Five Star - 6 burners 2x4 configuration with griddle between

Bertazzoni - 6 burners on left, electric griddle on right

Cafe - 6 burners on left, griggle on right

I like the Bertazzoni, but both it and the Cafe have all the burners on the left. I might as well get a 36" at that point.

Any others I should look at/consider? Thoughts on these brands? I thought I had seen Five Star and F&P in the threads a while back. I know Bertazzoni has been recommended. Is Zline a "budget" brand? The Autograph Edition is under $3k AND In-Stock (which is a whole other factor).

Suggestions on a hood is appreciated. We are redoing the whole wall there and there will be no cabinets above.

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Comments (10)

HU-16168550092
last year
JennAir Rise rangetops offer a lot of value IMO. Whichever brand you end up goingvwith, be sure to seriously investigate what servicers are available locally for the brand to choose. All appliances require service at some point and service is increasingly becoming difficult to find.
dizzy149
Original Author
last year
Unfortunately the JennAir are the same price as the Dacor, and their configuration has all 5 burners on one side.

As for service. That's tricky where we live. We are in a smallish town that acts like a small town. We are about 4hrs from larger cities with major service people. I was AMAZED that we had a SubZero tech 45min away!

We have a couple appliance repair shops that are certified for most brands, I'll double check against my list above though.
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I've mentioned this before, but hot cooking can generate meter per second rising and expanding cooking plumes. Generally, these will have larger sectional area than the pop-up slot area facing the plume. Yet, somehow, the slot velocity is expected to be high enough that the vector combination of vent air and plume effluent at the plume and over the entire plume area will be directed toward the slot. However, the slot acting as a mini hood has, like all hoods, to follow the behavior documented in the 2003 ASHRAE Handbook: HVAC Applications. There, Figure 6 page 30.4 shows that the air velocity has dropped to 10% of its slot opening value at 1.6 times the narrow dimension of the slot. Yet most of the plume is multiple slot dimensions away. One imagines that the slot velocity would have to be 30 m/s of so to be fully effective. (Let's assume induction cooking so we don't have to deal with flame extinction.) A 3-inch by 48-inch slot (1 sq. ft. area) would have to move air at 6000 CFM to accomplish this. Given the pressure loss of the slot, I can imagine the large and noisy blower this would require. In case this makes one wonder how regular hoods can work, please note that regular kitchen hoods do not pull effluent away from their direction of flow, but depend on the flow to bring the plumes to the hoods for capture.
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dizzy149
Original Author
last year
@User I have an additional $2k set aside for the hood.

Any thoughts on the Zline? Looks like there is a lot of bang for the buck there but I have no experience with them.
wdccruise
last year
Owners on Home Depot do like the Zline rangetops. Not clear if it's worth $900 for the "Autograph" over the non-autograph. Maybe there are differences other than the appearance thought a quick look at the specs on the HD site don't show any (e.g., the power of the burners is the same).
dizzy149
Original Author
last year
@wdccruise

Good call, I'll look into that. The only difference I saw was the accent options. May not seem like it's worth $900, but the diff in 400cfm and a 700cfm hood by Zline is also $900, so....
PRO
User
last year
Z Line is just one of the Thor/Kucht other name Asian imports clones of each other that uses an hodgepodge of various off patent parts thrown together. Their design and engineering is non existant. So is their fit and finish quality.

In theory, the generic parts are easy to find, and the ranges are not complicated enough to have too many issues, so that creates easy to DIY repairs. In practice, the people who buy these are not handy enough to work on their own ranges, and the low quality parts used makes calling a repairperson a frequent necessity. Bluestar is what these aim to be, but fall incredibly short of being.

6K total for a cooking budget is a 30” GE Profile range, a good Faber vent hood of at least 600 CFM, and a make up air system. If the ductwork, electrical, and gas locations need to be installed or moved to support the appliances, then that is added labor on top of that. That added installation related labor is a minimum 1K, and there is no top end if the ducting for the vent and mua doesn't exist.
dizzy149
Original Author
last year
@wdccruise The Autograph version comes with brass burners, the standard does not.

@User Thankfully I have gas, electrical and ductwork already. Thanks for the recommends of GE Profile and Faber.
M Miller
last year
"The Autograph version comes with brass burners, the standard does not"

Just be careful about the brass burners. There have been several tales of woe about ranges' brass burners. They can look unsightly in even one use. It's not about the brand Zline or Dacor or GE or whatever. The nature of brass is that it discolors with direct heat; you cannot change that. Better to keep brass finishes to just the knobs and handles, not the burners. One of the threads I saw mentions that the manufacturer says to switch out the brass burners every time you cook if you want them to still look brass!

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5383563/dacor-modernist-brass-burner-covers#n=11
dizzy149
Original Author
last year
I would expect that to happen, like you said, it's the nature of brass. It drives my wife crazy that my "good pans" have a natural patina and are not solid black or all shiny, so she would prob hate that. I am now curious if Zline has "show caps" too.
wdccruise
last year
"The Autograph version comes with brass burners, the standard does not."

There's another model, RTS-BR-48 that's not Autograph but has brass burners, a different finish, and is cheaper.

"Post" Pandemic Kitchen Reno, 48" Dacor Rangetop Alternatives?

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