Hello - This is my first post but I have been lurking on this wonderful site for quite a while as we will soon be remodeling our condo. I have been reading the kitchen forum avidly and have noted down several helpful suggestions. The condo currently has an electric range, but gas might be a possibility as there is a gas heater in the condo. Having read the various comments on this site, and given my preferences, my ideal is to install a 2- or 3-element induction cooktop, and a 2-element gas cooktop. Gas is for clay-pot cooking, and certain other forms of Indian cooking (roasting roti or papad). Since the kitchen is quite small, I want to limit the total cooktop space to about 36-40 inches horizontally. I went through the various models over at the induction site and the Diva DDPH3 model seems to be the best choice. Has anyone here used this model, or any other Diva induction models? Of course, if the condo HOA denies permission to extend the gas line, I will go with the above Diva or some other 30-inch induction cooktop.

I'm pretty sure they all have pan size recognition. Without it, induction wouldn't work. Whether or not they bother to mention it is another matter. Mine is over 20 years old and the manual doesn't mention anything like that but of course it's there. I should mention that on my old cooktop, my 5" cast iron skillet is recognized on all burners, but my 5" triply only on the "special" burner. And they all recognize anything bigger (although I've only gone up to 15").

I think Windcrest offers 5 burners on its 30" induction cooktop as well. Personally, I find 5 burners on 30" a bit crowded, e.g. where will the handles of your pots go???

Nominally, the aperture area (where the air is drawn into the hood) would be six inches larger than the contour of pan bases used on the cooktop. This would require a hood with a 22-inch by 36-inch aperture, depending on pan sizes used and hob sizes and layout Overlap is particularly important in island configurations where there are more ways cross-drafts can cause the rising effluent to miss the hood aperture and not even be captured, much less contained. With sufficient air flow rate on full power, some (not very large) effective increase in aperture around smoothed hood edges may be gleaned, but not much more than the edge size. The first option seems to have a middle section that doesn't draw air, this is non-optimal as some of the rising effluent hitting that part may not be captured after reflection from the surfaces. The second option, as noted, is insufficiently wide to meet the 36-inch goal. Also, the hoped-for equivalence of clean meshes to baffles is somewhat thwarted when the meshes are flush with the hood base instead of being farther up in the hood like commercial baffled hoods, although this is typical of mesh filtering. Last, the "honeycomb" design appears to make the effective aperture significantly less than the typical 50% of a pure mesh or baffles, but this is difficult to judge. It should work ok if the flow rate is sufficient to get the air velocity at the mesh gaps to be adequate (150-180 ft/min). I cannot help with any price determined manufacturer suggestions. kas