Experts are sounding the alarm about the hidden dangers of gas stoves
qz.com
qz.com
It seems like this is an area where IoT should really deliver the goods. I should be able to cheaply add networked sensors, fans, filters, and vents to my home to automatically monitor air quality and temperature, then take appropriate action. Sadly, we're basically stuck with smart thermostats that spy on you and deliver little benefit over a local solution.
I had a lot of hope for IoT air conditioning vents, but those products never seemed to materialize. Indoor air quality monitors are expensive and inaccurate. Nobody is offering me a real-time fluid dynamics model of the heat and pollutant situation in my home, let alone responding to it appropriately.
Amazing how hard it is to create reliable, computable models of the world...
All gas stoves should be below a hood with a ducted outside vent, the more powerful the better.
They also seem to require a centralized air conditioning/heating system. That would give you a nice central place to put an air quality monitor. The big challenge though is that often these central systems don't process all air in the building evenly. Multi-zone systems help.
1000% agree on the venting. It occurs to me that I have some gas heaters that I should double-check the venting on... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_recovery_ventilation
You still want a quality filter and humidity is an issue in some areas, but overall they can make a huge difference.
At the end of the exchanger, the warmed incoming air is in contact with 70° outgoing air, so it will be at almost 70°. Similarly, the outgoing air will be at almost -10° as it exits.
It will probably make more sense if you look at the diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countercurrent_exchange
My house basically has a natural set point that the exchanger runs at per season. Much like my thermostat I can basically leave it at a setting for a season and it works well.
There are a few days I may have to slightly adjust things, usually when there's a big temp swing, so if it were more automated that'd be better but in general I have to maintain conditioned air in both the winter and summer to keep the house stable... and the house seems happier for it.
What country are you in? I'm in the US and my nice home, built in 2015, doesn't have either one.
To my understanding, installing a very powerful stove hood in a tightly sealed house without proper consideration for a make-up air intake can cause problems (i.e. backdrafts in the exhausts for gas fired water heaters), especially in concert with other things venting outside like a clothes dryer. It's very possible to have it done right, but a pretty bad situation if done wrong.
The best part is how many "down draft" vents are put into place, even new luxury construction.
They look nice, but don't do much...
I don't have counter evidence on hand but assuming the oven is vented outdoors, my understanding is that a hood should be relatively low-powered, not high, in order to then capture emissions from the stove top. It should be a function of size, height from the stove top, noise constraints, etc.
https://www.prolinerangehoods.com/blog/cfm-need-range-hood/
You can vent both the gas oven and the stove separately. You have to buy high end appliances for that. I've seen them but can't remember.. maybe a Viking stove or something prosumer-commercial. Make up air can be a cracked window or a separate intake duct that opens up when the vent is turned on. Your local building code will have specific requirements.
You can duct a hood out of an external wall or even better out of the roof. If you go with a roof vent you can install the extractor fans in the duct in the attic which helps reduce noise if that's a concern. What you can do will depend on your specific kitchen.
I have found that the stove top is worse than the oven for emissions. The reason is that my exhaust hood is under-powered and it's a microwave/exhaust combination that doesn't extend over the entire cooking surface. So I would advise a hood larger than the stove top itself, install a larger duct and I would overestimate the CFMs required. If you get a multi-speed range hood then you can adjust it as necessary.
I actually think electric ovens are better combined with a gas stove top. Electric ovens though do have a tendency to fail at inopportune times (e.g. the holidays!)
I'm in Kansas City, and even into the $650k range, houses only VERY rarely are built with them.
Like around here, the building code in one city requires a certain blower door score to pass. But doesn't require blower door testing if you say you followed certain "sufficient" practices. There's no way most of these houses would achieve a sufficient blower door test score, but they all "comply with code".
My preference would be to self-host that model and the associated controls. I suspect this would require some meaningful compute capability in-house.
However, I suspect that the problem would benefit from cloud-scale compute. It's a fluid dynamics problem, which is just a lot of numbers to crunch. This might require more horsepower than a little ARM device can reasonably push out.
It came miscalibrated from the factory.
OR
After a short period it would no longer be calibrated.
Turns out keeping an air quality testing device calibrated properly is really really hard, and definitely not cheap. So maybe the computing side of this is not really all the difficult, but the physical measurement side of this is absolutely not easy.
Eventually I gave up trying to find a device for my home because I realized I would have to really dig into the science hard, and I would have to spend more money than I was willing. And I was unwilling to do either.
Using a sensor like this to measure percent of oxygen in a gas requires you to eliminate a lot of confounding effects like pressure waves, flow changes, etc.. Basically you can cause the sensor to absorb more oxygen than is present in the gas by temporarily increasing flow.
So if you're building an air quality sensor you have to pay very close attention to how the air moves through the sensor. That requires not just a calibration but also characterization of the flow through the system under environmental conditions.
One other effect I could see is a contaminant sensor becoming fouled. Oxygen sensors can become fouled and report inaccurate values, which is why it's very important to control the inputs.
This is one of the reasons an antifreeze leak in an engine block can cause your engine performance to go to crap. The oxygen sensor is part of how a stoichiometric ratio of fuel and air is maintained, by monitoring the combustion products for excess oxygen. So when it gets fouled either the ceramic element is damaged or the sensor stops receiving consistent flow and the resistance relationship ceases to be valid.
In short I don't see how you could build a useful long-lasting sensor by just buying parts off Amazon or Digikey and throwing them together. You would have to treat it like a scientific instrument, meaning that you have to validate your assumptions about how the sensor performs and I doubt that most of the products on Amazon do that.
> I started putting HEPA air filters all over my house
Can you very briefly say how you accomplished this? Was it with modified box fans? Thank you!
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-purifier...
LOTS AND LOTS OF PLANTS
One of the best filters out there is a spikey plant that you wouldnt think of as "pretty" but it is super helpful
https://leafyplace.com/air-filtering-house-plants/
While is #10 on this list, its still SUPER good at filtering... I Personally like LOTS of Pothos and Spider plants....
> To reduce VOCs enough to impact air quality would require around 10 plants per square foot. In a small 500-square foot apartment, that’s 5,000 plants.[0]
Potted plants do not improve indoor air quality: a review and analysis of reported VOC removal efficiencies[1]
[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/houseplan...
I just like plants in general... vertical walls in specific though I have yet to build my own (built the ones with architects in Salesforce office around the country)
but now I am craving more plants!! (and moss) ((and fungi)) (((planning on composting all these leaves with seeded fungi spores, just need to find the spores)))
They are pretty though and if you have the time and the room for them they definitely are worth having but $ for $ if your goal is clean air technology is far more efficient.
Second, I wasn't giving "advice" per se
I just think that the world is a better place with more plants ( I was just commenting about Singapore's setbacks with respect to how green a super dense city can be )
but What I am stating is that no house is complete without a healthy level of plants... (its the same as that adage; don't ever listen to a person who doesnt have any books in their home)
So dont like a home where there are no plants!
EDIT: Oh I forgot to mention, the ancient Mayan Saying "Humanity will die once the last tree is cut down"
>should be able to cheaply add networked sensors, fans, filters, and vents
Sensors can be ok... But your homes's AC design, even if based on simple building code lookups, is based on some fairy complex engineering which rely on certain assumptions.
If those assumptions aren't met, the design usually must be approved by a licensed engineer. This is why you don't see more independently controlled vents on the market. No professional is going to install products that don't meet code, unless an engineer has stamped the plans. (Which includes operational logic.)
Ignoring regulations, you shouldn't just add controlled vents to a system (or manually close existing vents) without compensating for that elsewhere. You likely need a variable speed blower, controlled/compensated return air flow, and system logic to control it all.
Will the house blow up if you install them yourself? Probably not. But it could result in a system operating much less efficiently, increase the number of system cycles (reducing system lifetime), cause duct ruptures/leaks due to increased back pressure, and most likely, cause condensation in places other than the condenser, possibly causing mold to grow and/or rot.
Which leaves 2 options: installing a commercial system with the integrated vent control you're looking for, or adding sensors for input for when the system should run, without modification. Biggest simple change you can make for immediate impact? Change your filters every month, even if it means using 12 $3 fiberglass filters instead of 1 $36 hepa filter.
For instance, I run a list of room temps through a simple max function to ensure my AC and/or blower runs until the hottest room falls below the set temperature.
If this results in wildly unbalanced temps throughout the house, you have a bigger issue, and likely need your system resized/adjusted by a professional.
Related, and because most people don't realize it, your AC is an engine. You want it properly sized and to run constant, when needed. Think of your car: is it more efficient to make a trip by many intermittent 100mph sprints, or driving 55mph without stopping.
Multi stage compressors now act like car transmissions to dynamically "size" the system as needed, but run constantly with minimal stopping.
+1 on the rapid change of filters, much better to change a filter frequently even if it is a bit lower performance than to let one sit for too long, but keep an eye on your electricity cost, that is the factor that should decide the quality filter that you purchase and frequently you replace it.
Ground rule: the better the filter, the more it will absorb, the better the chances that something you really don't want lodges there and starts spreading if the filter gets overloaded. Fiberglass filters are a good compromise between energy efficiency and cost, they have excellent working surface compared to their physical size and tend to have a relatively long working life before they 'join the other side' and become a source of contaminants rather than a filter of contaminants.
I live in a highrise in SF and this bit me during the wildfires this year. The air conditioning would pull in smoke from outside. I ended up turning it off altogether on the worst AQI days, and buying lots of replacement filters for both the furnace and some off-the-shelf air purifiers.
Most techs I get from companies have been very poorly informed and almost hopeless at "debugging" any performance or functional problem. The operating model seems to simply be to replace parts in a pre-determined "likelihood of failure" model.
I don't blame the techs - I liked most of them but after casual conversation it seems clear that most of them don't get much training.
I guess my main complaint is that while I definitely want to "call a pro" my experience finding a good professional in HVAC (and plumbing for that matter) has not been particularly successful.
And don't get me started on part pricing - I am very happy to pay for knowledge (with high hourly technician costs) but more than once I have had easily purchasable OEM parts massively marked up by HVAC companies in what seems just like price gouging.
Case in point, a few years ago when I was a new homeowner I converted to natural gas from oil and got three quotes from three highly rated companies. All three companies recommended the exact same boiler. A few months ago I started to research the outdoor reset functionality that allows it to change the water temperature based on the outdoor temp. Well, I discovered that the feature is basically useless for me because both of my zones are too small to generate the minimum number of BTUs at lower temperatures. So I have a (up to) 96% efficient boiler that will never be able to reach that efficiency. I either would have needed a smaller boiler and or a buffer tank to be able to work correctly.
In trying to fix it, I had multiple techs come out and none really fixed the issue. These are basically some notes on the experience: - First tech stayed for 6 hours. Cleaned the system, replaced a high pressure switched, and readjusted the PVC in and out takes. The pressure switch alone costed over $500 dollars. He did the PVC for free. The problem persisted after he left. - First tech sent a second guy out the next day. This guy comes in and within 10 minutes recommended replacing my Nest with their "preferred" smart thermostat for a cost of $500. He also wanted to redo my humidifiers water setup ($200), and redo the elbow joint in the condensation output of the furnace ($200). After he quoted me all of that I asked him to leave. I redid the condensation output myself ($15 in parts), and humidifier ($15 in parts). I looked up the high pressure switched they replaced, and was shocked to learn it only costs $150. - I wrote my first Yelp review ever because of this company. They contacted me a day after I posted my review asking me to take it down in exchange for a partial ($300) refund. I agreed. - I had two family friends who do HVAC come out afterwards to look at it. After seeing that it was a high efficiency unit they basically wouldn't touch it. They are older and basically said they never retrained for high-efficiency units. It was never needed because they have more work then they can handle with older units. All they were able to offer was to give me a good deal on replacing it with a less efficient unit if I wanted.
At the end of the day my issue was never fixed. Luckily we haven't had as cold of weather as that week, so the issue hasn't manifested again. If it happens again I honestly will cross my fingers and hope the next company that I use is more helpful then the previous.
If you Google your furnace model you may find you tube videos with similar issues or things to check.
That's it.
Somewhere there is a reservoir and something to heat the water. It can be anything, and indeed most older homes have been converted a few times already but nothing changed in the water system itsef. (For a house to have started with a wood furnace, then oil, then electric, then municipial heating or solar or whatever, is completely normal.)
The water either circulates by convection (very old systems), or with a pump. If the pump fails, convection typically still works, just less flow.
But even chilled water systems start to get complicated because of humidity and condensation.
And if you're already installing a forced air HVAC system for the 'AC' part, then installing radiators for heat is usually superfluous.
IOT is a signal for "large disposable income", so HEPA/health anything associated with IoT will bump up the price tag considerably.
Why would anyone deliver anything good when people already willingly paying for crap?
Same for me when I moved out of a stuffy old high-rise in Philadelphia. I had frequent coughs and wheezing, shortness of breath, and just lots of general discomfort with breathing. Every time I washed my car there was a thick black layer of soot covering it within a couple days, so I'm sure that was doing great things for my lungs. Also got a couple serious colds every year when I lived there. That was as a 20-something who never smoked, didn't have asthma and wasn't overweight.
Living in the suburbs now and haven't had an issue since moving.
Annoying as I certainly find gas more pleasant to cook with.
Any lower/middle class oriented apartments I've seen built in the past 30 years in my area at least have all been electric.
Also spent a lot of my 20's in cheap apartments, and never had anything more than an electric coil stove.
My first apartment out of college was an absolute trash heap. I lived in a studio, which had clearly at one point been a 1 br until someone put a wall in the middle of it to create 2 studios. Only two positive aspects about that place was the fact that it had a brand new gas stove, and that whoever had put up the wall failed to create a new electric circut for the studio, so my neighbor paid my electric bill for the year I was there :)
Ye olde grand cities new stock of apartments has gas, so Chicago, NYC, simply because it's already wired and can be cheaper than electricity in winter.
At a high enough income level you are right that kitchens separate the oven and stove. However you'd be surprised how many high end kitchens will use a gas stove because it's often a better and more versatile cooking tool, plus natural gas is something America has a lot of and is very cheap compared to the Russian gas that many Europeans have to deal with.
Also, the poorest of Americans will use electric ranges almost universally because we can make electric ranges for the same or less than a gas range and the poorest of people live in places that don't even get natural gas copper piped through their place. They would just live without it and have electricity only.
Another is time: minimum wage for a 40 hour work week earns you less than $15,000 a year (in the US). So many working poor are working more than 40 hour weeks, and can't take the time to cook, even if they can afford and obtain ingredients. Fast food is cheap, available, and fast.
Bigger problem is that low-income folks don't have the time, the access, or the urge -- marketing aimed at low-income folks works as well as on any demographic -- so they miss out.
If you're working 49 hours a week in 2 jobs and taking the bus home, are you gonna have the time to make steel cut oats and organic quinoa with mushroom broth, or are you going to hit the easiest thing on the way home, aka a quick burger at McD's? Quinoa ain't bad, but it doesn't hit the spot a the way a burger does either.
If we're talking the cheapest and worst food habits of the poorest, we're talking lots of ramen and tons of frozen foods. You can get big bags of frozen french fries for way cheaper than fast food. $3 gets you a fry at McDonalds or a 2 pound bag of frozen generic.
Fast food would be the luxury version lol.
Since I switched to induction i think it's the best technology. Yes, you need specific pans, but all the good ones are induction ready anyway.
Besides that, it's safe like any electric, can be fast heating like gas, is more efficient than standard electric, and the oven plates don't burn you for more than a minute after taking off the hot pan or pot (since the vessel is heated, not the glass plate).
It's seriously the best way to cook now, and it has gotten quite affordable.
Was also surprised to find out that it is actually the more economical choice for us as well. We can only do propane, and not natural gas, and its a lot more expensive, so it works out nicely.
Don't want to go back to anything other than induction at this point.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342533629_The_impac...
Induction gives you most of the benefits, without the hazards described in the article, or the same risks of fire and explosion.
Also, better induction cookers have useful enhancements such as "hold my pot at 85 degrees" or "hold my fry pan at 180 degrees".
A layer of soot in Philadelphia? I've spent plenty of time there, know plenty who live there, and never saw or heard of such a thing. Were you parking next to a chimney sweep?
I think you're going the wrong way. These problems were caused by trying to artificially exert control over a complex environment. Similar to trying to "manage" a natural environment, each effort results in 2 more side-effects which each then need their own "management". On the other hand, some modern "management" techniques are to simply re-introduce nature to an environment and letting it self-manage. This ends up with better ecological health as well as less cost and complexity. But we have to let go of whatever weird human-specific desire caused us to mismanage it the first time.
Why do we need carbon monoxide monitors? Because carbon monoxide builds up, because gas-powered devices and heat exchangers live inside the sealed home. Put them outside the home and the problem is solved, no technological solutions necessary.
A properly designed home can also avoid things like vapor barriers, reduce dependence on air conditioning and heating, avoid mold and mildew, and require less maintenance. But if we insist on working within existing home designs, there's a constant requirement for new fixes for the new problems we introduce.
My own "redesign" is just to look at how homes used to work. Wattle and daub, hogan, pueblo, timber frame, log cabin, long house, clochán, crannog, igloo, walpini, adobe, brick. They each have pros and cons, but they work best for where they were built and the needs of the people that lived there. They adapted solutions for heating/cooling, pest control, weather resistance, cooking, storage, etc that fit their purpose. As far as I know, none of these homes ever had to deal with annoyances like mold or carbon monoxide. But then again the downsides could be severe in densely-populated urban areas; entire cities could be razed overnight by fire and strong winds!
Before modern homes were redesigned to take advantage of supply chain efficiencies, timber frame and stone foundation were common in the US. Before air conditioning, homes were designed for where they sat to take the seasons into account. A central corridor of air could be funneled by opening doors or windows on either side of the house, rapidly cooling or heating it, and windows and shutters could lock in whatever the temperature was - but this would be a bad idea on a humid day! A stone foundation acted as a mini thermal battery, and some building materials were incredibly good insulators. Also common were fireplaces and living quarters in the center of the home; shut all the doors to keep your room toasty warm, or open them up to warm the house for company. There was no vapor barrier, no sheeting; just nail some shingles to the frame and stuff whatever you can into the walls for insulation, or build walls out of a composite like mud and stick. In wet, hot areas, you had lots of porches and big awnings so you could stay outside with a fan in the shade.
There's many other old-school techniques we could be using, but then homes become more expensive as no contractor knows how to build them, or we've literally done away with all the natural resources and now they have to be acquired at great expense. Not to mention of course, zoning might have made it all illegal anyway. In many ways we've engineered ourselves into a corner.
A combination of sensors and actuators to fix the air problem, yes. But where does the internet come into play here? Seems like something 100% local to me.
Except if you want to view the data remotely, but that's a side feature, not a main requirement for this to work.
One of the main problems is that homes are not built for indoor air quality. Furnaces in crawl spaces or garages, lack of air sealing. You can't just add sensors and fans to fix the problem.
Plus, adding a fan/vent to a home isn't ever going to be cheap. You're talking about cutting the interior and exterior of your house, running ducting and wiring up electrical.
I have an anecdote about the Awair. The air at one of my previous workplace was making me sick, so I asked the management to look at the air quality. They hired a professional who saw nothing - because they asked for the AC to be turned off during the monitoring.
I got an Awair and managed to track when the air quality dropped. It was whenever the AC came on. They then called another professional who finally caught it -- turns out the building's ventilation ducts had not been cleaned in 5 years AND there was water damage.
Without a customer grade air quality tracker, I would have simply believed the first professional. I would have had to either suffer being sick daily at work or having to quit for air quality reason.
Now I carry mine around to my friends and family's house and let them borrow it for a while. It always come up with explanations about issues people had been quietly enduring forever.
If you want to use one suche device on the go, at friends places, etc., I'd recommend the Atmotube Plus or Atmotube Pro by Atmotube (depending on your needs).
My purchase was a few years ago now. I've heard that the market is bigger now, so you may want to shop around. I also have the big Dyson purifier at home which comes with built-in sensors.
1) Asthma is strongly correlated with gas heating and stove use.
2) Gas heating and stove use is strongly correlated with latitude.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/42/6/1724/737113
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3072993/It’s possible (and indeed likely, from the studies linked in this thread and article) that cold weather contributes both to gas usage and asthma, and gas usage contributes to asthma on its own.
As an aside -- it's important to keep in mind that the article does not say "gas stoves cause asthma, rip them from your homes immediately or be prepared to curse your infant with respiratory illness." It says, "there's a link here, and we should do something about that link." The author goes to great pains to use words other than cause: "connection" "link" etc.
From the article:
> The cumulative evidence was enough for the venerable New England Journal of Medicine to publish an editorial in January recommending that “new gas appliances be removed from the market.” It was co-authored by Howard Frumkin, a former director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, which is responsible for investigating environmental drivers of illness and promulgating guidance about those risk factors.
I will burn a bitch at any chance I get! I literally broke my brick hearth last week chopping wood.
I was one grounded for a week when my dad came home (general contractor) and I was staying home from school with the flu, fever, and I was pumping wood into that wood-burning stove like I was trying to drive a train... it was like 110 degrees in the house.... my dad was furious,
Now, I have an endless supply of wood and a really nice fireplace - ive been going NUTs burning everything I can!
I know heat is heat but for some reason wood-stove heat seems like it just works better on the human body. Ours is in the basement, so it's 95 down there and that heats the entire floor upstairs.
---
I grew up in Lake Tahoe. and in 1982 - there was the biggest winter in over 100 years - we had 30 feet of snow, and no power - and we cooked all our food on the wood burning stove.
I had deliver care packages to the various tourists who got stuck in their houses due to the snow - and we would have people come to our house to bath because we had hot water....
I recall making popcorn each night on the stove...
Wood burning stoves are the best!
edit: I'd take that pine smoke over the general "Essence de Diesel" that pervades the current European city I live in!
More broadly, the Quartz article quotes experts who cite 4 decades of research about the the dangers of gas stoves.
I really liked the idea of the range top being a flat, solid surface, and staying relatively cool, keeping spills from baking on and making cleanup ridiculously easy.
My wife tends to run hot, temperature wise, and gas ranges throw off a lot of heat into the surrounding area. The inductive range heats amazingly fast, reacts as fast as her parents gas range, and I can boil a teapot, pull it off, and immediately put my hand on the "burner". It's hot, sure, but on a gas or resistive range I'd have to go to the ER.
Some people put down paper towels under pots before cooking to make cleanup easier. Cleanup has lived up to my expectations, very easy.
The resistive solid surface ranges still get very hot, and a friend with one talks about how hard it is to get baked and burnt on foods off.
Now with all this talk about the combustion byproducts being problematic, I'm convinced this was definitely the right choice.
When we moved in, we noticed this specific "gas particulate" smell throughout the house whenever we'd use the stove. It wasn't leaking gas, but rather this smell I associated with dirty burning or something. The other times I've smelled it have been in propane space heaters for outdoors.
We replaced it with an induction range and have been completely happy with it. Heats amazingly fast, no burner to burn things, no emissions in the house, we love it. I never want to own another kind of range again.
Also, I've lived in several other places with gas ranges and never encountered that before. Maybe it was just worse with that range?
When I was remodeling our kitchen we went with a over range microwave because there really wasn't anywhere else to put it. Those are known for fairly poor airflow. We got a KitchenAid with some of the best available airflow, 440CFM IIRC, but stand alone hoods can do much better. I still have a todo of replacing the roof vent with a larger one, so there's probably still some restriction in there that's slowing us down. You might want to look for similar.
Noticed a chemical smell. Not what I considered a typical gas smell.
Was assured it was just new carpets/Flooring etc.
3 months of run around on it. I was so disoriented I started walking into traffic. Kids couldn’t spell they’re own names.
It was a major gas leak, plus carbon monoxide. Furnace and stove.
New Carbon monoxide alarm never went off.
Yea, massive medical problems all around from that. Completely destroyed our lives.
I don't doubt any of what you're saying, but that seems odd.
His was showing extreme numbers. Mine blinked happily.
He said this was common. Always get one that showed actual numbers.
Hope you are recovering okay.
The past several mornings the kids were extremely hard to wake. I was walking to work when I realized I was standing in middle of a major street. Gas guy said at levels it was at, he didn’t think kids would be waking up ever again.
I’m alive from it. I don’t worry about planning for retirement any more. Certainly won’t live that long.
They were only interested if we got a doctor to sign off that toxic gas caused Injury.
Turns out doctors don’t care. They treat symptoms not causes. Several said they had had no idea what that much natural gas exposure would do.
Plus when 100% of the time I would explain it was carbon monoxide AND natural gas. They would fixate on carbon monoxide. Declaring that that those issues clear up quickly. Ignoring the other half of the issue.
Eventually gave up as I basically was bed bound for better than a year and just couldn’t fight it.
I use more than one CO detector and order from different manufacturers. Same as I have done with hard drives or SSD's.
Will note this is trivial to do typically cost wise.
Recover. No.
Turns out some latent conditions active when exposed to toxins.
Are gas stoves more/less prevalent in houses based on incomes, geographic regions, urban vs suburban, etc? Are unvented gas stoves more common in some areas? Are gas stoves used as central heating systems more common in older, often smaller/lower-income housing (it's pretty surely "yes" on that last point)? Do many low-income housing units have induction cooktops? (I suspect "no")
If gas stoves were more common in cities, I can imagine that other city factors might be causal yet show up as correlated in the study. (I did try to read for controls the study included, but that was not well-covered in the article.)
Rural homes, in my experience, use propane stored in tanks onsite, rather than natural gas piped in from a central source. And older suburban homes use onsite "heating oil" stored in tanks, usually in the basement, though, these homes are often converted to use nat-gas piped in from a utility.
I'm curious, with good insulation and modern heat pumps, does electric win these days? (Let's assume we're talking about winters that get down to 0°F at night, but not -30°F.)
There are dual fuel systems that use heat pumps until they stop working and switch to heating using a regular furnace. They cost a little more but they provide some marginal savings (even if those depend on the cost of both electricity and whatever fuel the furnace uses).
My NYC apartment has a modern heat pump and it certainly works when it's 0°F outside which is well below freezing -- according to its specs, it's still more energy-efficient than electric coil heating as long as the outdoor temperature is above something like -10°F.
So it's not for extreme cold (-30°F), but it can absolutely handle a wide range of sub-freezing temperatures.
Hand-wavy, order-of-magnitude estimates here.
82% blended efficiency gas equipment is ~$15/1MBTU
Geothermal heat pump at a blended COP of 3 will take ~100kWh for that same 1MBTU. In MA, that 100kWh will cost you $20. (That's after a potentially $75K-100K installation cost for the geothermal wells and equipment vs $10K for a decent modcon boiler.)
So, pay an extra $50K-90K up-front and 33% more for your variable energy. (Of course, you get air-conditioning included above in most of the geothermal installs.)
Moving parts. Gas is more reliable in the very long term (10/20+ years) because it has fewer moving parts and operates at lower pressures than heat pumps. Gas is also easier to upgrade. Installing a larger furnace or water tank costs X. A new heat pump solution, 10x.
Heat pumps have a place but a New England winter is not that place.
"For climates with moderate heating and cooling needs, heat pumps offer an energy-efficient alternative to furnaces and air conditioners."
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-and-cool/heat-pump-s...
What does that mean? Air conditioners are heat pumps. Are the two terms used for distinct classes of products in US, or something like that?
The heat pump does a much better job of cooling the house in the summer in comparison to a gas furnace, though.
In terms of cost, I happen to have both a high efficiency gas furnace and a high efficiency electric heat pump in a home with great insulation, and have been able to experiment with how they compare for heating the home. We don't get winters that go below 25°F, but gas heating is FAR cheaper (I estimate less than half the cost). We personally feel the air quality is better with gas heating as well, although this might be subjective.
I live in Massachusetts and the cheapest source of heat is an electric, air-based heat pump matched with solar panels.
Without solar, electric air-based heat pumps are cost competitive. You have to do the math, though. (How much BTU per therm of gas or gallon of oil; reduce by efficiency, then convert BTU to kwh, then divide by the COE of your heat pump.)
At my old house in Massachusetts I paid $0.12 per kwh, my gas price was equivalent to paying $0.04 per kwh to run a resistive heater; a heat pump with 3.0 COE would be "break-even" with gas.
At my current home my solar loans are estimated to cost about $0.04 cents a kwh. Obviously, I went with a heat pump instead of a gas furnace!
The total delivered price is $0.19xx for me per marginal kWh and seems to be close to that across MA.
Even if it is essentially for safety, it has (where implemented correctly) the side effect (advantage in this case) of creating a flux of fresh air.
Where this is not needed by the norms (electric stoves and similar), expecially in modern "energy saving" houses, problems of humidity and mold often arise.
As said in other threads, our grandmothers and mothers used to open all windows briefly every morning, nowadays - for one reason or the other - most people do not do this and - coupled with the increased air tightness of windows and doors - makes mechanical ventilation a need.
... and also their children and grandchildren because who, anywhere, wouldn't do this ?
Even while living in Minneapolis, in the dead of winter, we still cleared the air each day. I guess forced air heating made that relatively pain-free since you can reheat the entire house very quickly ...
FWIW - Many places/people. Most, in my anecdotal experience.
- I've seen numerous condos in north america and Europe that do not have effectively openable windows, certainly not in quantity to properly vent the entire unit. So you couldn't if you wanted to.
- Some cultures have very differing perspectives; where I'm from, interior "Cross-winds" are deemed to be deadly. You will NOT open two windows at the same time anywhere in the house, ever, period. If any window happens to be open and a kid opens the front door, they'll be yelled at to close it ASAP lest... I dunno, something about their lower back?
- But most people I've spoken to / lived with, across countries and continents just don't bother / it doesn't occur to them. It's not a thing (this includes living with three host families in Minnesota in the 90's - none of them opened their windows much if at all, trusting their HVAC to take care of them. Two of them were medical professionals.
Interesting! Never heard this before. Where are you from, if I may ask?
https://zablogreb.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/propuh-or-the-gre...
My family members used to yell at me for sitting down on a stone fence or concrete bench, because something something cold stone ... lower back / kidney disease.
Some people would feel a slight draft indoors and immediately start yelling for the windows to be closed.
I knew a very wealthy guy in Germany who bought a Mercedes 560SEL - at the time, the top-of-the-line model. He ordered it without air conditioning because he didn't want to get bronchitis.
This makes literally zero sense. It's even stupider than Korean Fan Death.
(I think the article I linked later demonstrates some interesting and radically differing cultural assumptions)
In Romania, too, popular belief considers drafts to be a dangerous cause of illness, but at least in my own experience, opening all the windows in the morning is an exception. Airing out the house daily in winter is seen as a healthful thing to do by many if not most families... but of course once all the windows are closed again, there shouldn't be the slightest hint of a draft anywhere in the house.
Whoever paying to heat the building in question isn't gonna do this.
This thread seems to give a great overview of all interactions: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/45349/how-air-hu....
It's actually common part of contracts in Germany that you have to vent at least 10min per day through 2 different rooms etc.
Even when it's raining outside, etc?
Where I live, allowing outside air in greatly increases the inside humidity. And I would guess this is true for most people given the widespread complaints of dry winter skin and bloody noses. Which is the product of increased furnace operation.
Just because a rental contract includes a clause doesn't make the intentions of that clause consistent with reality.
I know my grandmother did it but people seem to have lost the habit. I’ve only heard of it being widespread in Germany.
Would be interesting to see a world map of daily clear-the-air adoption. I hadn’t heard of it before this year.
https://welcometogermerica.com/2018/12/how-to-air-out-a-room...
Generally speaking "traditional" houses in Europe (made with brick or stone walls) tend to have rather poor insulation but very high termal mass, as opposed to more modern houses (and to the essentially wood/timber based houses in north America) that have a higher insulation but very low thermal mass.
In high thermal mass houses completely changing the air does not lower that much the temperature as as soon as you re-close the windows the air is re-heated by walls, ceilings and floor radiating the heat they accumulated before.
[1] whilst in reality it only re-heats the air
This is a common practice (except in very cold or highly polluted parts of India) even today - and not just briefly, either - windows are often open until evening, until a bit before mosquito entering time. And some people again open windows after 8 pm or so, because the lore is that mosquitoes won't move much after that. But that is oldish stuff, and it can be different these days.
And even in those colder or more polluted areas, some people still do it.
I worked in an office building without windows that could open years ago, and I got a headache around 2pm every day. It had some mechanical ventilation, but it's not really the same as actual fresh air. It was by far the most horrible office I've ever worked at.
A lot of people also don't like it when I open windows for a bit to let some fresh air in, even when the air is clearly stale and musty. I don't know why people are so opposed to opening windows. My pet theory is that it's a subconscious psychological connection to a certain piece of software :-)
I'm guessing it's that people don't like wasting or letting out air that's been heated, cooled, humidified, or dehumidified. I live in a place that gets all four seasons and my house is completely sealed up except for during a few weeks when the outdoor temperature is just a bit cooler than the indoor ambient temperature.
My head has generally been clearer since I moved into the city and kept the windows closed, compared to suburbs or city with open windows.
It's been amazing to see how much what I considered "light" stovetop cooking will set it off and make it spend the next 20 minutes on max settings trying to decontaminate the air. Pan-frying and stir-frying are expected triggers, but even the evaporated vapor from a pot of simmering soup can make it momentarily angry.
Meat fat seems the worst offender. Nothing angers it quite like trying to brown/sear meat does. God help us when I cook bacon in the cast-iron skillet. Even if there's no smoke (I keep the heat at medium low to prevent the bacon from burning), the AP might continue to run for up to an hour after I've turned the damn stove off!
I am not sure these HEPA filters are fine enough to actually filter NO2, SO2, CO, etc, are they?
It sounds like it can't tell the difference between water vapor and harmful pollutants. Not that it needs to for it to do its job, but the machine may not be a good indicator of actual pollution levels.
Yeap. Not sure what type of sensor it has, but it will react to water vapor. Our master bedroom is right next to the bathroom so showering will cause it to work at its highest setting.
Not that it's a problem per-se. Just that it doesn't really "know" what's in the air. So while your cooking may indeed be spewing pollutants everywhere, the fact that the filter is working harder doesn't mean the air is bad.
That said, humidity needs to be controlled too.
What is interesting is, cooking downstairs will set it off. I have two humidity sensors, and they can't see any difference. Still the filter will start to work and I can't claim it's because of water vapor. It some other type of particulate, harmful or not. It's getting filtered anyway.
1. Starts with "experts". This is some weird... appeal to authority in the title? Why do you have to tell us that they're experts? Would we not come to that conclusion ourselves?
2. Tells us the "experts" are "sounding the alarm". This seems like a cheap way to make something sound more urgent than it really is. I've got a thousand "alarms" going off in my world right now, you want to add "gas stoves" to it? (Ah, but you're an expert... how foolish of me not to listen to your clarion call!)
3. The "hidden dangers of gas stoves". Are... ...are what?
I can't locate the exact sources now, but it's apparently very difficult to vent the NO2 to the outside with a range hood as the hood is so far away from the flame that a massive amount of airflow is required. This introduces an entirely new set of problems where makeup air must be provided to avoid depressurizing the house. If it's hot or cold out bringing this makeup air is a huge waste of energy as heated or air conditioned air is exhausted and unconditioned air is brought in.
My quick solution for now was to replace the range with two portable induction cooktops which have been working great. I've been happy with now they provide the fast temperature response of gas although there was a bit of a learning curve at first.
Other trouble I had was largely due to the Ikea Tillreda cooktop I purchased first; it only has ten temperature settings which made it difficult or impossible to find the correct setting when sauteeing. The second cooktop I purchased was a Duxtop model which has twenty temperature settings which seems to work just fine, and the Ikea cooktop still finds use boiling water and other tasks where precise temperature control does not matter.
Another problem that I have with both cooktops is that the actual heated area of the pan is only about 6" in diameter, whereas it seems to be common for a full size induction range or cooktop to have at least one 12" element. This is more noticeable than with a standard electric stove because the heated area on induction comes up to temperature almost immediately whereas the unheated areas of the pan take a long time to warm up through conduction.
Edit: I should add in case the above sounds negative that I love using induction and can't wait to have a full size version! The digital control and fast heating give me better consistency and less time standing around waiting than gas. I would however recommend that anyone thinking about switching to induction first buy a portable unit to try out as decent ones are well under $100.
The small cheap portable induction units have a number of tradeoffs that are not inherent to induction itself, but are more related to.. being inexpensive and portable.
Like the parent here though, we do all of our cooking on a cheap, portable, induction hot plate sitting on top of our gas stove because it is just that much better. I also cannot wait to get a full size version, but this is unfortunately hard when you rent apartments.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1420274
It's possible that what I was reading before was discussing direct capture of the combustion products, but it stands to reason that if you're exhausting a lot of air with the range hood it's going to limit the concentration of pollutants by cycling the air in the entire kitchen. Alternatively I could just be remembering incorrectly!
My range hood is unfortunately configured to recirculate, and it's not in a convenient location to duct to the outside. If I change entirely over to electric I'll likely keep the range hood recirculating and install a central ERV or HRV that pulls air from the kitchen to manage winter time air pollution throughout the house.
I suppose I'll just be more proactive using my indoor air monitor when cooking; albeit it's hard to know for sure. The monitor always shows a non trivial ambient level of VOCs; so it's hard to know what is safe, what is from cooking, what can be prevented, etc..
On my unit you can reconfigure it to vent out the back (if the unit just happens to align perfectly between the studs -- which mine didn't) or you can configure it to vent up through a duct. I had a duct run through the roof. My air quality is definitely better when running the range hood now; it still gets bad when I cook, but just less-bad than before.
Solve that and the health crisis is gone: richer cooking aficionados will install chimneys, and miserly landlords will install electric appliances.
Range hoods with powered vents are required, by code, basically everywhere in the US and Canada.
In fact, many code jurisdictions are sophisticated enough to require make-up air ducts, etc.
These building codes specify vertical distance from the rangetop, CFM rating, and hood area (which typically overlaps the range area by 2-4 inches on each side).
EDIT: To clear up some confusion - most code jurisdictions don't force you to update existing installs unless you are rebuilding/remodeling - so if you have an older apartment/home ... who knows. New construction is going to vent gas ranges to the outdoors.
Typically they have removable metal screens that can be cleaned.
Otherwise they do nothing to vent smoke or purify air.
The majority of apartments I've lived in, in NYC, do not have range hoods at all.
Ones that had been remodeled in the past 10 years had a range vent that just went through a useless mesh "filter" and straight back into the apartment.
The only working range hood (vented to outside) I've ever had is in my current building which was constructed less than five years ago.
Maybe it's required for new construction, but in a place like NYC the vast majority of apartments aren't new, and certainly don't have range hoods.
Is "powered vent" supposed to imply exhausting to the exterior? While every home I've seen does have some sort of powered vent over a gas range, the overwhelming majority of them have recirculating vents rather external venting.
Some sort of fan is required.
That fan is often a down draft vent, or a vent that rises up from the back of the stove and sucks horizontally THEN down.
These horrible setups are popular even in luxury construction. They do look nice after all.
That said I am wondering if maybe they are better for NO2 emissions.
They are terrible in every other way though, but are quite legal as indicated by their presence in new construction.
If we had required excellent fresh air ventilation for indoor spaces, we might not have had to ban indoor smoking. I don’t smoke but I don’t mind if others do, as long as I have fresh air that isn’t polluted by their smoke. We might not have had to ban indoor dining during Covid, as long as each table’s air is pulled upwards and away from other diners and exhausted into fresh air, since the ventilation could contain UV scrubbers on intake and exhaust. As another comment here describes, we wouldn’t have people being poisoned by gas stoves, because the pollution would be vented rapidly in any building where they’re used.
Confronting the ventilation crisis is unfathomably difficult for America, and it’s unclear if politicians have the stomach to even consider it. I’m a little sad each time I see some new cause spin up to resolve an issue stemming from poor ventilation, even as I’m happy that the cause is correct in outcome. I just wish that we’d stop circling the issue and hone in on it and make it a national crisis, somehow. At the end of the day doing so would demand nationwide investment in revisions to the ventilation of every building in America, which would require national funding as most cannot afford to do so - and those that can would refuse, preferring to lobby against it instead of spending their own money.
In the meantime, crack the windows of your home as often as you can afford to do so. This problem isn’t the fault of any single renter or homeowner, and in the short term, that’s all you can do.
Ventilation previously on HN (139 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19858155
--
Also if you have a central furnace, leave the fan in the on/recirculate mode, rather than 'auto'. The power usage of modern furnace fans is very minimal, and the effect on air quality is significant. Especially if your furnace has a fresh air intake, which most do.
You can combine that with periodically cracking windows or running bathroom or stove exhaust fans (could even install a switch to automatically run the bathroom fan on a daily schedule). When things are sealed up, the furnace won't pull in a lot of outside air (but the recirculating still helps a lot), and then when you have an exhaust path (fan or window), it will pull in more. Then it's just a matter of finding out how much to exhaust. A bit each day should be fine, or you can get more precise with a CO2 sensor like [1]. Especially in a closed bedroom overnight, it's amazing the difference you'll see with the furnace fan and/or an exhaust fan running, or a window open.
1: https://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-Autopilot-Desktop-Monitor-L...
For some reason I get a buzzing sound when the stove applies current (minor).
It does have the instant heat that gas does, but what I've noticed is it doesn't have the visual feedback. When cooking with gas, it's easy to tell how much you've turned the heat up or down, just look at the flame.
I'll probably get used to it over time, but I miss gas at this point in time.
I did put up with electric resistive for a long time before switching to gas and I dealt with it just fine. I'm only 1 month into inductive so let's see how things go. In the grand scheme of things I'm pretty sure I've survive. :)
Does it not have a power/intensity knob or setting that’s displayed? Even with gas ranges that’s what is used because the flame is blocked by the pot.
On my induction stove, 5 is medium and 6 is boiling. Not linear at all.
As you visit friend's places, see if they have different brands of inductive stovetop, and try them out if they do.
Also maybe try a pot with a thicker ferrous base?
Visual feedback is from a number (1..9) displayed per induction ring. There is also a per-hob 'h' when it is off but still considered hot. When you activate a hob you can start it at strength 4 (of 9) or 9 (full-on). Or 1 and keep pressing up or down buttons to the setting you want. I'm used to this now.
Cleanability is awesome. Because the whole surface is flat, unused rings can also be used as a heat-proof surface when you have lots of hot pans that would scorch a normal work-surface. I think it keep things warm (without sticking) better than gas because the heat is better distributed over the whole bottom of a pan.
Main downside is that it is useless in a power-cut.
The biggest issue though is every IH stove I've used has had touch controls on the top glass panel which means if you have any spills or overflow, you can't even turn it off.
Just seems like an odd issue for it to be your “biggest” turnoff from induction.
We've settled for a unit that has physical, clickable, tactile buttons to control the temperature and a numeric readout that clearly states the current temp and all controls on the side, away from spills. I'd love to find an induction stove with a plan old knob for each hob though.
I dislike the fact that gas stoves typically come attached to gas ovens, and gas ovens are kinda crap. Electric/resistive actually works better there. Less moisture, less smells, more efficient, seems to heat up faster and give off less waste heat.
Edit: Found it:
> There are no Energy Star® certifications for ranges, but research by the U.S. Department of Energy indicates an induction cooker is 84% efficient at energy transfer, versus 74% for a smooth-top electric unit, giving it a heating performance comparable to a gas element. More significantly, induction is 90% efficient with its power use, using 2.8 kW to deliver 2.52 kW. This is a substantial improvement over electric coils, which use 2.0 kW to deliver 1.1 kW (a 55% efficiency), and over gas, which uses 3.5 kW to generate 1.75 kW (a 50% efficiency).
https://insteading.com/blog/energy-efficient-induction-cooki...
OTOH, even a basic GE induction range has almost no heat waste. So while a burner might only be rated for 10k BTUs, all of that heat is going into your pan. Which is how they do things like boil water in 2 minutes.
The biggest issue with induction is that the larger ones have enormous power requirements.
No, the biggest issue is that electrical power is not (easily) available everywhere (think "wherever you camp") and always (think "earthquakes and hurricanes"). But I can carry or find gas/oil/coal/wood almost anywhere. How many trash fires in the inner city of Chicago on a cold night? There are always political signs, trash, and/or wood from buildings available to burn. Nothing like warming your hands by a barrel fire with a bunch of friends!
Induction technology has come a long way; make sure to read reviews and get a stovetop that does "simmering" well. Also make sure to think about the interface -- a lot of induction stoves require two steps to change the temperature (first click several times to choose the burner, then click several times to adjust the temperature up or down). We went with one that had a full range of buttons for each burner; only one press required for any one change.
When boiling a pot of water, induction is 74 percent efficient at transforming and transferring input energy to the water, and the gas range comes in at 32 percent. The induction method was 32 percent faster and consumed 57 percent less energy. [1]
We have an induction cooktop, and it’s amazing how quickly it can bring liquids to a boil.
The only thing I can see that gas has over induction electric is durability. You can slam pans down without worry of breaking the cooktop. Useful in a commercial setting, but at home I’d take induction over gas any day.
[1] https://www.treehugger.com/which-more-energy-efficient-cooki...
Not modern electric ones. I cook a lot, and I moved from a kitchen with a modern electric range, to a gas one... and it was a definite downgrade.
Quite simply, modern electric ranges will heat your pan faster than gas ones can. It's seriously crazy. And of course they heat more evenly, instead of in a single "ring" in the middle or outside of your pan.
I'm not even talking about expensive inductive ranges. I'm talking about electric resistance ones -- but modern ones that are a single smooth surface of glass/ceramic.
The only change you have to get used to is that if you need to instantly reduce the heat, you need to move the pan off the burner rather than just turn it off. But that's just a change in habit.
Also modern glass-top ranges are infinitely easier to clean. Just a single smooth surface.
My only concern is how well a wok will heat up on induction.
Gas has the benefit of wrapping around the wok, I worry that induction won't do that. :/
I hate the smooth glass electric stoves, if a pan is even slightly warped it won't work. I've waited 20+ minutes for a pot of water to boil on an electric glass top because the pot had a slight bow to it so only a tiny fraction sat on the actual stove.
Also the last glass top I had got messed up the first time a sugary liquid over boiled and spilled on it. Never could get it looking brand new again (and most glass tops I've seen have stains, even after being vigorously cleaned by professionals!)
As for warped pans, I never had that problem -- all my stuff is thick stainless steel-clad pots and pans. That's interesting though, it makes sense -- it would need full contact for effective heat transfer.
College, I had thin aluminium because I was broke. Everything was warped.
Thinner non-stick pans also warp really easily.
Thicker pots and pans take longer to heat up, sometimes a lot longer. e.g. My 1.5q pot can take over 10 minutes to boil water. Making hard boiled eggs is annoying, to say the least.
(I'm using gas, and one of my back burners is too weak to even boil water in my thick 3 layer pots...)
I wouldn't think it would make a huge difference, since the weight of the pot is a relatively small proportion of the weight of the water.
Turns out someone tested it:
https://www.centurylife.org/what-kind-of-pot-boils-water-fas...
And the aluminum wins over steel-clad by 30 seconds, when heating two liters of water.
If you're seeing much larger differences, perhaps it's more to do with the pot diameter or something? Or if you're heating very small amounts of water?
Small diameter pot, large gas flame. The flame doesn't hit the bottom of the pot at all. I can heat up 2x the water in my pot that has 2x the diameter in less time.
Sucks.
The old fashion type of electric burner in that article is my 2nd favorite, great contact with almost any type of pot or pan put down on it.
The best pot I ever had for heating water was of the dollar store variety. It was pretty much the minimal vessel needed to just hold the water.
Wider diameter pots of course work best, assuming a lid is put on. More bottom surface area to transfer heat to the water.
I had this issue and ended up replacing my set of cheap and cheerfull, thin-ish and slightly warped pans with heavy, thick stainless steel ones that hopefully don't have a tendency to warp. So far so good.
Gah, same, but now my triple clad stainless steel -> copper -> stainless steel pot takes forever to heat up because of how thick it is.
I bought an electric kettle for tea but that doesn't help keep noodles from taking 16 minutes to make, the first 10 of which is boiling the water.
Now I am using gas, so my next purchase is going to be another cheap thin pot that heats up before the rest of dinner is done.
I'd like to emphasize "modern" here. Just a month or two ago I replaced an old resistive electric stove with a new resistive electric stove - and it heats shockingly better than the old one.
Because California generally decides these things not based on whether they can be done safely, but whether they can be done unsafely. If someone could be harmed by something then nobody can have that something. That's just how they do things.
In Germany, it's (mostly) mandated by law to have these (see §4 FeuV for example: https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/BayFeuV2008-4), the only exception is when there's a powerful forced air ventilation system present and operating. Can't remember ever not seeing an interlock as a result, even the cheap IKEA gas stoves have one.
> The people most burdened by these impacts are those who struggle the most to pay for cleaner alternatives
I don't believe cost is the main issue, rather lack of awarness. I just checked, in Uk you find both gas and electric hobs for the same price tag - stating from 100 gbp.
The biggest cost of installing a electic cooktop is actually having dedicated wiring with a 32amp fuse. This is more tricky in old builds, it could require changing the fuse box and running new wires - a lot of mess. In new builds it is more common to have this by default.
So it's not exactlly a case of rich/poor but rather old/new.
Good luck trying that in Europe, where gas price is a fraction of electricity (~6ct / kWh vs ~30ct / kWh). Additionally, using electricity for heating is madness - essentially the generator plant burns stuff to turn water into steam that rotates a generator, then there are transmission losses, and only then it's finally converted to heat. A gas flame is as direct an energy-to-heat transmission as it gets (although there are some losses here too, for compression stations).
I'm paying 60€ a month for gas for both the heating and the stove in a ~60 m2 apartment, and 70€ in electricity. My direct neighbors who have electric heating and stove pay over 200€.
Regarding the pollutant issue: open your windows while cooking, get a CO alarm and have your water heater regularly cleaned and inspected. That's basic life advice, and the latter is actually mandated by law in Germany.
You need 208v from three phase per or a 240v buck transformer though...
I use a 208v Adcraft induction cooktop for beer brewing and it's strong. Boils 6 gallons of liquid easily. Just using a 240 to 208v transformer.
I have a suspicion that the statistics in the article are more because people with electric cooktops don't cook as much, and simply use the microwave instead.
One thing each of them has had (or neglected, really) is a phony vent for the stove. There is a hood fan, and what appears to be conduit leading to a vent, but there isn't actually any vent. It's an empty casing made of chipboard. The hood fan just blows upward onto the front of the cabinets above the stove and leaves a delightfully greasy trail.
At best, it does some minor filtering. But based on the grease deposits on the aforementioned cabinets, it doesn't do much.
We're moving to townhouse about an hour outside of town [in a beautiful town on the escarpment to boot]. The house was built in 1896 and has better venting than our current modern, downtown "luxury" condo.
And the dust. Let me tell you about the dust. It's unceasing here. We can dust one day and inside of a week it will be as dusty as if nobody has lived here in months. We're looking forward to being in a space that has been built and tended to be lived in rather than an image of a dwelling that is really only a vehicle for investment.
1. NO2 produced by gas appliances 2. Various pollutants produced during cooking 3. Poor venting
The article mostly pushes for legislative solutions to 1, namely banning new gas stoves and incentivizing electric stoves.
I wonder if improving ventilation and filtering might actually be a more effective solution, as it has the potential to address all three issues.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1420274
(Kinda long...)
tl;dr those stupid microwave exhaust vents may only remove, at worst, ~25% of no2 from the environment.
A cheap hood, 30%.
A really good hood, 90%.
This is kind of characteristic of the scientist-authoritarian perspective that breeds resentment of academia and science in general. Researchers spent decades, per the article, making up their minds that gas stoves are bad. Now, some of them want to see restrictions in place in a few years' time. The lay public is effectively asked to change their minds faster than the experts did.
A 24% increase in the risk of asthma is bad, but people knowingly choose to take bigger risks every day. This isn't an emergency: it would be really nice to see a proper communications strategy, because all of this shouting from the rooftops has contributed to an absolutely stupefying epidemic of ludicrous conspiracy theories.
I don't have a gas stove, but my AQ sensor reports high VOC while/after cooking and I'm reluctant to turn on the stove hood as it's so noisy.
Anyway, electrical kitchen appliances sure as hell do use a lot of power. Good thing you're not using them most of the day, and that even when you are using them, you're often not running them close to full power. But it does seem possible to achieve as much heating with electrical as with gas, which is nice. Hell, if you have some induction burners on that stovetop, and I tend to cook in cast iron so pretty much all of my most frequently used pots and pans would already work fine with induction anyway, then you wouldn't need anything close to 5.9 kW on the biggest burner to achieve the same heating. That's because one of the downsides of gas is that a lot of heat gets lost to the air, which isn't nearly as much of a problem on an electrical range where the cookware is sitting in direct contact with the heating element. Electrical thus achieves a higher overall heat transfer efficiency for the same power, especially with induction where the cookware itself becomes the heating element.
That's a bit of a digression but apparently you can achieve high power outputs with electrical stoves, it's just that a lot of the electrical stoves a lot of us have experience with are shitty ones from decades past that legitimately did not heat well.
Our stove is on a 40 amp circuit. From my reading, 50 amp is pretty common.
On top of that there is a dedicated 20 amp circuit for our microwave (which broke a few years back and we never replaced)
Plus a dedicated circuit for the garbage disposal / dish washer.
Plus one for the fridge
Plus one or two more for countertop appliances.
It's kind of crazy to think about.
One thing that bugs me is that there aren't counter-top 240V kitchen outlets. If I ever build my own house I'll put in an extra 240V circuit for the kitchen just so I can have some higher power outlets for electric kettles and such. You can boil water for tea twice as fast with 3 kW as with 1.5 kW, as those smug Brits always like to remind us about. I don't think I'd make much use out of 240V anywhere else (except obviously in the garage for EV charging), but just having a couple outlets in the kitchen would be a godsend.
But there is a greater philosophical question here: the article seems to be setting up for a war on gas stoves and gas heating. I know this is a goal of climate activists, and that push is already happening in places like Seattle where a prior attempt to ban gas in all new home construction was met with outrage and pulled back, only to now be replaced by a similar ban for commercial buildings (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/amid-incr...).
Personally I want to be able to use gas ranges for cooking - electric cooking is simply no match for it, and I also just like the idea of cooking with fire. Should the state really be imposing all sorts of controls and restrictions in search of perfect safety? Can individuals not evaluate and make risk-benefit tradeoffs that suit themselves? After all, most people who have gas stoves do not have health issues like asthma, and the statistics quoted in this article seem to just be correlations rather than causal relationships.
I wonder if there might be an opening for (electric) "conduction" cooktops. It would basically be a dedicated heat-proof and ventilated spot on the countertop with some high-current electrical receptacles (standard voltage in most of the world, but maybe wired for the slightly less common 240V in North America).
They might include temperature feedback (something I'd love to see in induction cooktops too, maybe an IR thermometer hitting the cookware from below), possibly with controls built into the kitchen rather than the cookware.
Of course this would substantially raise the cost of cookware, and in many ways this already exists in the form of "a countertop with electrical outlets and plug-in cooking appliances", but maybe there's an opportunity here.
"the investigators estimated that, during a typical winter week, 1.7 million Californians could be exposed to CO levels that exceed standards for ambient air, and 12 million could be exposed to excessive NO2 levels, if they do not use venting range hoods during cooking."
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.122-A27
Also pilot lights are apparently responsible for about 30% of methane emissions from older gas appliances. So ventilate your house or switch to electric ignition.
Wouldn't recommend for any existing construction unless you know how air tight your house is (get a blower door test done).
- decarbonize 80% of US energy by as soon as 2035
- create up to 25 million new jobs
- save the average household $1000-$2000 every year
- massively reduce pollution-related health effects
https://austinair.com/is-your-gas-stove-making-your-child-si...
I've started running all the upstairs bathroom fans when cooking. That, running a HEPA filter in my bedroom, and always keeping that door shut, is the only way to keep the PM2.5 count in my bedroom at a reasonable level.
I picked up one of these a year ago, and highly recommend it: http://www.dylosproducts.com/dc1100paqmc.html
I tried to buy a Speck, but it looks like they're perpetually sold out: https://www.specksensor.com/
I will often turn on our vent, but it's certainly not something I'm doing every time I turn on the stove..
While this exists to some extent for gas stoves, it doesn't seem to be mandatory to ensure a gas stove/vent hood is compliant.
I'm much more concerned with central heating. I wish more homes had electric and radiant floor heating.
I have to crack the window in the office and put an electric heater near the window to avoid feeling lethargic from all the oxygen being depleted and replaced with noxious gases.
I also have windows opened most of the time just to let fresh air in. I also dont see any solution on the market that fix the fresh air problem.
A basic indoor water fountain captures quite a lot of indoor pollution, to the point that it's likely far more energy and cost efficient than pumping air through a disposable filter. There's plenty of research on this.
More and more I feel like most of us slept through science class. I don’t know what is happening, but it worries me.
Would a CO monitor help in detecting these issues? Or would I need something more?
As for stove, I.m planning to replace my old GE range with an induction range.
I also have a gas line on the patio so my grill never runs out of fuel.
I'd like to not die of air pollution, so gas stoves are problematic.
I'd also like to be able to get consistent and even heat out of my cooking heat source, so electric stoves are problematic.
It'd be nice if someone could just make something I can cook on that is reliable, even, and not going to kill me or give me cancer.
The requirements are not necessarily equal, but you can't disregard safe temperature guidelines unless you never make food with raw meat or eggs.
It's definitely more expensive than an equal-performing gas range would be, both in initial cost and continuing operation, but it's also easier to clean and allows me to not have natural gas at all.
Right now we're just starting to see induction units that will manage to temperature instead of on a scale of 1-10.
Breville in combination with Polyscience, came out with a unit, The Control Freak Temperature Controlled Commercial Induction Cooking System, that not only can manage through the glass temperature but also has a temperature probe to really manage temperature, down to the 1/10 of a degree. It allows for cooking to be done in ways that can't be done previously.
Commercial kitchens are starting to switch over to induction units because it's much easier to keep kitchens clean, and it also significantly lowers the temperatures in kitchens.
This is just a propaganda piece in order to manufacture the public perception that we should give up the absolute miracle that is the ability to have a safe cooking fire, with adjustable and controllabe heat levels, with the turn of a dial.
climate change cultilsts literally want to throw away the pinacle of 1000s of years of cooking technology and replace it with inferior products.
That's their thing, that's how they make money. I guess believe them if you want. These things are the new religions.
Air quality everywhere matters. Cooking with gas at home is pumping in a airborne substance. There's a good chance it might matter personally. But gas is changing the would environmentally and ethically for the better. We need to be sure from a neutral scientific source, if they still exist.
And why stop at gas stoves? Plenty of homes have gas water heaters and gas furnaces, even in the absence of gas stoves. Yes, if properly vented it's a non-issue, but if they aren't?
And what catches my eye are statements like...
"gas stoves have much higher concentrations of NO2 than those using electric stoves—levels that would violate legal limits if measured outdoors"
Ok, what is "much higher"? And violate "legal limits"? What legal limits? Occupational exposure? Car exhaust emissions? Not being specific makes me think they are just playing with words.
> very clean burning
I think the issue is sometimes not the methane itself (though I suppose nitrogen in the air + methane could explain some of these things), but bits of food and other things that also burn.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Dyna-Glo-30000-BTU-Wall-Or-Floor-Mo...