Lpg Kitchen Burners

[pdilley]

I am thinking of replacing my electric stove top with LPG gas. Being out the middle of rural nowhere its either electricity or LPG.

One thing that has put me off gas stove tops before is all the small burners. I would rather have one with 4 large burners but have not found any.

Does anyone know if such a beast exists/

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[QldKev]

I am thinking of replacing my electric stove top with LPG gas. Being out the middle of rural nowhere its either electricity or LPG.

One thing that has put me off gas stove tops before is all the small burners. I would rather have one with 4 large burners but have not found any.

Does anyone know if such a beast exists/

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

A few years back when I was doing my kitchen up I looked at a few LPG stoves and was thinking of the same conversion. I found there were not a great deal of 600mm 4 burners ones with decent burners, but there were a few 900mm 5 burner stoves that had some serious grunt. Basically a huge wok burner, 2 large burners, 1 med and 1 small. Don't know if you can fit in a 900mm unit but something to look at.

QldKev

 

[Nick JD]

Commercial kitchen gear? Restaurant kitchen burners are massive.

 

[Lecterfan]

Pete,

a mate of mine just built a new house - the stovetop is larger than normal as it has 4 normal burners in each corner, but in the middle....yep, you guessed it, a full on wok burner. I begged his wife to fire it up for me and I'm sure it would boil single batches without even trying.

So although I have no solid info, such a beast does exist and is possible. As Nick said, I suspect what they have gone for was possibly sourced by the builder through a commercial distributor rather than domestic.

edit: sounds like what QldKev is describing....

 

[keifer33]

Smeg do something similar to what your describing has 1 small 3 normal and 1 wok

http://www.smeg.com.au/Product-366-90cm_Cl...top_PGA95F.aspx

 

[Malted]

Yep my vote is for a 900mm unit as it will definately have bigger burners than a 600mm unit. That is what we did in my kitchen. A 900mm freestanding unit with electric fan forced oven and gas cooktop. You just can't beat gas cooktops for repeatability; every time you turn the dial to 3/4 it is going to heat exactly the same. You can not say the same for electric cooktops that come on and off and especially with rural power, sometimes you need it at full bore and other times at 1/4 throttle to get the same result. Fan forced ovens FTW too.
We had to get an electrician to instal a 15 amp line for the stove and a gasfitter to instal the stove - this exercise was quite expensive.

I wonder if you could jet it up? Natural Gas has bigger jets than LPG so surely you could jet up a LPG system? Any gas fitters wish to comment?

 

[pdilley]

I can do 900mm as I will have to do some bench top work regardless as there will be a large 60cm hole to fill.

There is currently a 600mm electric range oven in a 61cm wide gap in the kitchen bench. The dodgy previous owners put gunk on the electric elements to make them look black. Turned out they are rusted through to the wires in the elements. The oven is not large enough to fit my cookie sheets/baking pans and being rural with power outages I like the idea of LPG for a cooking alternative to the BBQ if the power is out.

I love the smeg but its a bit much when considering I still have to look at an electric oven to replace as well. I think I will have to sort out the jj/hour burner ratings and see what all the makes are out there with as many larger ones and hopefully no or just the one tiny useless jet.

I have not started on price/quality/capacity comparisons with electric ovens yet

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[DUANNE]

do you have gas hot water already? one thing to consider is bottled gas costs a fortune to run. we only recently got natural gas where i live and cant believe how much cheaper it is to run, honestly buggered how we used to afford to run our gas apliances at all. im not sure how it compares to electric though as we were all gas any way.

 

[Malted]

I think $ is going to have to come into your considerations real soon.
A 900mm freestanding oven & cooktop is probably going to be cheaper than seperate units and much easier to instal.
You can get some cheapies at the big green shed or some reputable places, that are below $1,500 but mostly for a quality unit you'd be looking around the $2,200 mark. I went for one that had a door flap/compartment under it so I could put the grill assembly in it when I was roasting etc. Where else would you put a 900mm or so wide tray etc?

Then you are going to want a range hood that actually has enough grunt and vents into the roof instead of back into the kitchen. Have a good look at the lights in them too - are the actually bright enough or feeble.

Oh and then you are going to want a new fridge, a bigger one. And then you are going to want to build a walk in pantry, then rip up the tiles and redo them and then rip out the benches and put new ones in. It is a slippery slope my friend...

 

[pdilley]

First I need to sink two 40 metre long shipping containers into the ground to make my massive underground cool room

Yes I understand the slope, trying to avoid it.

I found a lot of these consumer ovens and cooktops can easily get quite pricey.

I can get a restaurant grade gas cooker with electric oven for the same price as consumer units. Or 1/2 the price of the consumer units if I buy a used one. The only issue is the electric ovens on restaurant gear is normally looking for 3-phase electricity.

I have a 440V 80amp main interrupter switch in the circuit breaker closet inside the house so it started to look promising.

Going out to the work shed where the underground power comes into the property there is a meter with Phase: 1, Wires: 2 but it is not spinning and looks dead. There is a second meter with Phase: 2, Wires: 3 Voltage: 440 and it is actively spinning. I turned the lights on in the shed and it span faster while the other meter still was not spinning.

The previous owner (tried) to tell me he thought there (might) be 3-phase in the work shed and single phase to the house. But this is the same guy that fancied himself a tractor wiring expert and I have one dead (non recoverable) battery, broken connectors to the alternator, a whole slew of missing wires and connectors not plugged into anything and other mechanical issues to sort out when the weather gets warmer. So after what I have seen he's done to the house and tractor I have no more trust in what he said.

As I don't have my first electric bill yet I can not use that to try and determine what type of service I have.

I was sure 3-phase was 3 240V supplies, 240 to neutral, 440 phase to phase, and 4 conductors bringing it in, but I'm still a bit suss with one lifeless meter...

I have some timers and other gear on there, also an off-peak-water heater to sort out sussing how the hookups work but for now it is quite windy, freezing and starting to drizzle so I'm back inside warming up by the fire.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

do you have gas hot water already? one thing to consider is bottled gas costs a fortune to run. we only recently got natural gas where i live and cant believe how much cheaper it is to run, honestly buggered how we used to afford to run our gas apliances at all. im not sure how it compares to electric though as we were all gas any way.

Beerhog,

Running the cooktop as gas is very economical, thats the only reason why I'm considering it. All my cookware is either restaurant aluminium, or anodised aluminium, and the odd SS stock pot so induction is out as a choice leaving only electric which is, in my opinion bottom of the heap in choice for cook top heating. I'll still go for an electric oven. The bloke up the road gets nearly 9 months from a standard 9Kg bottle of LPG on his cook top and got me onto considering it.

Once you start heating with LPG you run through the gas like crazy and it gets very costly indeed. My water heater is electric on off-peak, so I have that covered. House heating is wood fired from all the trees supplied on the property itself.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[colonel]

G'day Pete.

We built a new kitchen 3 years ago, and apart from the double glazing (we live near you), the LPG cooktop was the next best decision we made.

I have just replaced the bottle for the second time, so that's 2.5 years on 2 bottles, and we cook nearly every day.

We've got a Blanco 3 burner, because we couldn't think of a reason that we'd need 4 burners going at once, and it gives plenty of room around the wok burner. Some of the 4 or 5 burner cooktops look good, but if you put a wok on them, it makes it hard to use the other burners.

The other thing to watch, is that because the gas hob sits higher than an electric, you need to watch your bench height. (we didn't think of that).



Good luck, and see you at the next B.A.R. do.

 

[pdilley]

I did see some 2 burner models out there. It did let me pause and think about building my own custom cooktop out of multiple 2 burner models to get what I want (larger burners and no small useless burners).

I'll have to do some more searching as time permits and look at the various options to mix and match.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[kjparker]

I was sure 3-phase was 3 240V supplies, 240 to neutral, 440 phase to phase, and 4 conductors bringing it in, but I'm still a bit suss with one lifeless meter...

Yep, if you have three phase, you will have three meters.

The previous owner to my house was stealing three phase power to run his lathe and other bits. I found this out when I had my board upgraded to circuit breakers and safety switches.

If there is nothing being drawn through the meter, by that I mean nothing on that phase, you wont see any life on it. It'll take a sparky 2 seconds to tell you though....

 

[Kevman]

We have a 900mm cooktop with the 5 burners.

The center burner is great for getting a big pot to the boil. I've only done 20 litre pots on it though. Although I move it to one of the large burners to keep the boil going as I can't seem to turn the center one down enough to get the wort to a decent boil and also minimise loss.

 

[Malted]

Yes you want big burners so you can heat quickly but as Kevman pointed out, you need to be able to dial them down too.
So I suppose you need to ask yourself, will you be running your kitchen as a commercial one with large quantities, or a domestic kitchen with smaller quantities? Will you really need a 100L pot of soup for you and the missus?
Here is a couple of thosands words for you:



This below is the wok burner on flat out. Though not huge flames there are three rings of them.

 

[pdilley]

I had a 5 burner nat gas with large centre ring burner at the previous rental and loved it. Did all my early BIABs on it. But I did notice when the centre one was in use there was not much room for anything else. I also love wok cooking but think I will hae to buy new flat bottomed woks to sit on the stove properly.

I'll have to look up the Vic regulations on gas cylinders indoors. I remember NSW has a size limit but here in Vic I've not needed to check yet.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[pdilley]

I do have a need for larger pots and pressure cookers than the average domestic as being on a farm all preserving needs to be done with the seasons and doing heaps of little pot canning and preserves wastes time and fuel.

The rest of the time, no.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I have a normal 600mm gas cooktop wok burner, 2 med and 1 small..

Dont be put off by the burner size, you will be suprised at how much heat they throw. Of course you will never really biol a 30ltr kettle on one.

I run mine off a 9kg bottle and get about 3 months out of it. In fact it is actually cheaper to buy 9kg bottles than the big tall one.

 

[stux]

Don't know if you know, but if you have a 600mm hole and you want to cover it, you can get a 750mm cook top, the one I have actually fits into a 600mm hole and have a bezel/flange which goes out to the sides.

But, that's not going to get you your 4 large burners and centre massive burner

good luck