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Comment by lukev | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint: I also measured the pollution from my gas stove (using the same meter the author is, from the look of the graph) and it was well within acceptable parameters. And I don't even have a vent above it.

I bought a meter and started monitoring after reading an article similar to this one.

My next stove will probably be induction, but just be aware that not ALL gas stoves are problematic if set up correctly and burning cleanly.

Definitely get a meter to make sure, though.

Edit: since lots of people asked, I got a uHoo sensor from Amazon. It measures basically everything and cost $300.

View on HN

NO2 is not easily measured accurately with inexpensive sensors like the uHoo. The US government tests a number of sensors and generally finds them lacking - my limited research suggests NO2 in consumer equipment is generally estimated mathematically based on correlations with other more easily measured pollutants, meaning it’s just not measuring NO2 at all.

The uHoo was tested some time ago and found to not be that great, but not for NO2 (which wasn’t tested)

http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/sensordetail/uhoo

Indeed, as far as I can tell uHoo’s own website does not list an NO2 sensor as part of the equipment, despite listing it as a pollutant it reports:

https://getuhoo.com/blog/business/performance-precision-and-...

This is the same sensor used by others who have reported high NO2 levels correlated with their gas stove burning, though, so it's got to be measuring something relevant.

Update: I read a tweet thread by the author of the original post, and they also used an uHoo.

So if you find the "uHoo doesn't measure NO2 anyway" argument compelling, then really we're all just talking about nothing.

False positive and false negative rates can be different. Trusting that when it says bad, it means bad can be consistent with doubting when it says good

Also, this is not a measurement that yields symmetric action, since it’s harmful in only one direction. Your actions based on the same level of accuracy are likely to be different.

If a device can tell you something is maybe poisonous, a positive result is going to lead to very different behaviour than a negative one, even if they’re equally likely to be accurate. This is especially true when your priors (ie research with accurate devices and knowledge of combustion) lead you to expect (prior to measurement) that it will indeed be poisonous.

So how do I measure NO2 in the home and not something that “correlates”?

The AQMD website has tested devices, and any they found accurate is probably a good place to start.

My limited research suggests the most affordable and reliable gaseous measurements like NO2 want a metal oxide sensor, which you don’t see on consumer grade equipment but is available affordably from commercial sources. It’s more hassle though so I gave up on measuring NO2 for now. Particulates seem to be readily measured with suitable accuracy by consumer grade equipment.

Yep.

Sure, but it’s not measuring NO2, just things that sometimes correlate with the presence of NO2 in some environment. So, maybe it’s sometimes rightish in a general ball park sense, but often it won’t even be that as these correlations are necessarily based on lots of assumptions that often don’t hold. And this is all ignoring interdevice variability which is often very high on this consumer equipment if the tests are to be believed.

A good rough indicator is that the flame on a gas burner should be pure blue. If you see yellow tips, or a yellow flame, it's not getting enough oxygen for complete combustion.

If you use an ultrasonic humidifier with a demineralization cartridge, it will turn your burners bright orange due to the sodium added to the air. It's not dangerous, but very disconcerting until you know what's up.

proper combustion will probably increase your nitrogen dioxide levels, not decrease them; if you have yellow diffusion tips you are getting unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide which will tend to reduce any nitrogen dioxide present

the carbon monoxide can kill you pretty fucking dead tho

That's my understanding as well. Three stage catalytic converters reduce nitrogen oxide emissions through reduction, so it makes sense that a reducing flame (oxygen starved) would produce less nitrogen oxides than an oxidizing flame.

Both my Range Rovers are converted to run on propane, and unlike on petrol the LPG system runs the engine very lean. If you use a special glass sparkplug (those old "Colortune ones!) you can see the flame is a lovely bright blue on propane and quite orange on petrol, with the mixtures set correctly.

Measured at the downpipe with the sniffer in the lambda sensor hole it shows no (or almost no) CO and a bit more NOx than you'd really want, but after the cat there's no measurable NOx either. The tailpipe emits basically just warm carbon dioxide and water vapour.

>Both my Range Rovers are converted to run on propane

What is the downside to this? Obviously availability and ease of filling is part of it, but any other downsides?

There's a big metal tank where the spare wheel goes, so you lose a bit of space. Availability can be a problem occasionally, particularly where I moved to, but filling is just as easy as filling a petrol tank.

In theory the engine makes a bit less power flat out, but I never drive flat out. It's quieter, runs cooler and cleaner, and has a bit more low end torque because propane burns with a bigger slower bang.

shorter range with the same size gas tank maybe

yes, though if it's sufficiently oxidizing (sufficient excess of air) the flame temperature starts to drop, which will also cut your nitrogen oxide emissions to almost zero

> I bought a meter and started monitoring after reading an article similar to this one.

Which meter? (I'm asking because I have a bad experience with a device from Aliexpress that turned out to produce fake air quality measurements. Though it did not claim to measure the NO2 pollution which the article talks about.)

edit: the uHoo seems to be an expensive device that promises to measure a bunch of stuff, but it cannot be calibrated. I would not trust it.

I think what I've heard before is that this needs regular monitoring, which most households will not do. Stuff can break in your stove and oven and you might not know.

>Stuff can break in your stove and oven and you might not know.

I'd argue >99.9% of people would have no clue if the stove was otherwise functioning normally

> And I don't even have a vent above it.

Where I am, this is illegal!

I unintentionally bought a "smart" gas range. I hooked it up to turn on my oven fan any time the burners are on, and for some minutes after they're off. I t think all ovens should have this feature, built in.

Do you also have a vent that goes outside? Because an oven fan means little if you don't have external exhaust.

Here (Italy) there is a safety norm originally dating back to 1974 that (though a lot more complicated than this) essentially makes in any kitchen (with a gas stove) compulsory two connections (of a given size, 100 cm2, in practice a 12 cm pipe) with the outside, one at a low level for intake and one (usually it is the kitchen vent, but it could be another opening) for exhaust at a higher level (I seem to remember above 1.80 or 2.00 meters).

It has to be underlined how - in practice - the actual need for such provisions was at the time perhaps a little exaggerated (as windows were usually leaky) but with the increasing use of air-tight windows (but not usually mechanical ventilation of the house) the intake and exhaust are actually needed.

Yes, the law requires an actual vent that removes the combustion gases from the breathing space.

$300?! That's half-way to a decent induction range on sale.

The cheapest induction range at Costco is $1,150. I would not bother with anything that is so low quality so as to be able to be sold at half of Costco’s cheapest model.

Also, hiring an electrician to install a power outlet for the induction stovetop could be at least $500, if not $1,000+.

I'm in the process of doing this now diy. the wire alone is $500 before any labor is added.

Has there been a huge price drop? We bought a range about a year ago and the cheapest induction ranges were still around $1,800 on sale. Gas could be had for like $350, entry-level. And has a robust used market, which is lacking for induction (which isn't necessarily the tech's fault—it is fairly new)

Here for example 242 euro, plenty of choice: https://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/p/matmassig-inductiekookplaat-ike...

Huh. Ikea's got one—and only one—induction option, for $1,400, in the US. A couple cheap "portable cooktops" ($70!) but only one range, and it's not cheap, though that is cheaper than what I was seeing last I checked.

[EDIT] Nebraska Furniture Mart, which has a much bigger selection than Ikea:

Cheapest induction range: $1,493 (sale price, claims full retail is more than $800 higher)

Cheapest gas range: $529 (also a sale price, claims full retail is $139 higher)

Maybe it's a voltage thing (120V vs 240V)? In Australia you can pick up a Bosch induction cooktop starting from $899 ~$620USD including tax.

It's probably just an American thing: many things in America are atrociously expensive for some reason. Here, it's probably the American expectation of a "range", which is a huge 4-5 burner stovetop combined with a humongous oven large enough for a whole turkey or even a small child.

Here in Japan, IH stoves aren't that expensive, but they're just stovetops with 2 or 3 burners. There's no such thing as a "range" here, and while ovens are becoming much more common, they're the size of a microwave oven, and usually combined with one. You can also get portable single-burner IH stovetops for less than USD$100.

you're taking shots at American prices compared to Japan, but then say Japan doesn't have those and only tiny versions of them. I use my range all the time at close to full capacity. it's not a useless or wasteful appliance.

You're cooking turkeys and huge multi-person dinners every day? When I lived in America, I never used my range to full capacity, in fact I never used more than one burner at a time, and never baked anything that wouldn't fit in the little microwave-sized oven I have now (i.e. cupcakes). Yet I was *forced* to own a full-size range, because there's literally no option to have anything else in American homes: every home is built this way.

I see this in other things in America: you're forced to spend tons of money on stuff you don't need because that's all that's available, frequently because there's an assumption that you have a big family. So everyone whines about housing being expensive, but there's no option for a tiny 1-person apartment because building codes don't allow it.

obviously not every day, but I do it at least 3 times per year. the vertical space isn't necessarily needed because spatchcocking the turkey is a better method, but oven here are built up standard widths and heights. I have used all the space/racks in the oven before on many occasions.

I'm probably not the norm, but I'm actually seeking out a double oven for this very reason. I have to borrow the neighbor's oven during big feasts because we can't fit in.

I use the full width on mine all the time. The height's not really necessary, most of the time, but I don't think the extra material to bring it to counter height is adding much to the cost.

> I'm probably not the norm, but I'm actually seeking out a double oven for this very reason. I have to borrow the neighbor's oven during big feasts because we can't fit in.

Double ovens are really, really nice, especially if you favor certain kinds of cooking or cook for large numbers more than a couple times a year.

[EDIT]

It is true that I almost never use more than two burners at once, but OTOH once you've committed to a certain size (and that size is nice, for being able to fit e.g. much larger sheet pans in the oven—IDK how you'd roast veggies for five in those tiny apartment-size ovens, without multiple batches) I, again, doubt it's adding much to the cost to go with 4 or 5 burners instead of 2 or 3, if the thing's already big enough to fit that many.

Yup! Since we don't have the space for a wall oven, I seeked a double oven. It turns out there's only one manufacturer (GE Cafe) that makes a double oven with an induction range.

My experience is that many things in the US are cheaper than Europe or south America. It must depend on what type of products.

Yes, it really does. Some things in the US are absurdly expensive (like eating at a restaurant or getting a medical procedure), other things frequently significantly cheaper than elsewhere (like buying a car, assuming the same model, or a gallon of milk). Sometimes it's due to expectations: Americans have expectations that others don't, and meeting those expectations costs a lot of money.

As far as multi burner built in cooktop/stove electric/induction setups, pretty much everything available in the US is 240V.

You can get like countertop stuff that is 120V and lots cheaper.

240 is available everywhere in the US, just the regular wall plugs are only using one phase of the two phase input. Often half the house is run on 1 phase and the other half on the opposite phase.

Many homes already have 240 plugs behind stove and dryer installations. And even if you don't already have one you just need to stick a new breaker in the panel and run a wire using both phases together instead of a neutral or ground.

Any installable* induction cooktop in the US will be 240V.

* meaning “not a countertop plug-in hob”

https://www.amazon.com/Empava-Induction-Cooktop-Electric-EMP...? Empava 30” Induction Cooktop Electric Stove Black Vitro Ceramic Smooth Surface Glass EMPV-IDC30 $338

Thank you, I meant to link to the Ikea drop-ins in my original comment. Excellent value.

USD? Mid range where I am is over $1k USD, from a big box store. Amazon shows similar results. Are you thinking a little countertop unit?

Yes. I have seen drop-in counter ranges (not countertop) go on sale for like $700. In addition, this Samsung range/oven combo was on sale for $900 in November.

https://www.samsung.com/us/home-appliances/ranges/electric/6...?

That's true, but it's also valuable for analyzing air quality for lots of other things (including Covid safety using CO2 as a proxy.) I use it at home and also bring it to the office occasionally to make sure things are reasonable there.

This articles is very misleading and makes conclusions based on a low cost sensor that in most cases will give you very wrong absolute readings. I would not trust the results at all. Unfortuntaley all too often, people do air quality measurements and just blindly believe what they see on the display as true figures.

It appears that the monitor in this article is a uHoo meter that can also measure NO2. The uHoo uses the SGX Sensortech MICS-2714 as NO2 sensors. It is a low cost metal oxide sensor and has a couple of significant issues. It is extremely suspectible to interfering gases like CO, Ethanol, Hydrogen, Amonia [1] and also gives highly different results based on humidity and temperature [2]. So just normal temperature and humidity fluctualtions will give greatly different results.

Like other TVOC sensors, often the measurements correlate somehow with the gases but the absolute measurements are often by magnitudes wrong. If absolute measurements -as highlighted in the article- are important than the sensor needs to be calibrated exactly for this environment. This calibration requirement is even mentioned in the official specs [2]:

IS CALIBRATION NEEDED, AND HOW OFTEN? It depends on the application, and on the required precision. Several factors tend to reduce the measurement accuracy e.g. production dispersion on base resistance (Ro) and sensitivity (S), temperature, humidity, the presence of interfering gases, ageing of the sensor, and on-time. Calibration is needed when the required accuracy cannot be obtained due to one or more of the factors listed above. This is the case for most applications where an absolute gas measurement is needed.

This problem with absolute measurements on MOX sensors (most TVOC sensors) has been recognised by the large sensors manufacturers like Sensirion and Bosch and the newer generation of these sensors do NOT provide absolute measurements anymore but an INDEX which defines if air quality is improving or getting worse.

In our open source air quality kits [3], we offer the Sensirion SGP41 as an option which is a much more modern sensor and offers an Index for TVOC and NOx. It still suffers from some of above issues like cross-interference of other gases but at least it does not give false absolute values. It can be very useful for detecting spikes but as outlined above the results need to be really understood with the knowledge of the limitations of these sensors in mind.

[1] https://www.sgxsensortech.com/content/uploads/2014/08/0278_D...

[2] https://www.sgxsensortech.com/content/uploads/2014/08/AN2-%E...

[3] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/kits/

My house has a large air volume, the 2nd floor is half as big as the first, so half the first floor has 20 foot ceilings. I don't monitor NO2, but do monitor PM2.5 and CO2. I see no difference in PM2.5, but do see my baseline of 550-650 CO2 bump to 1500 with significant gas stove usage. The CO2 spreads quickly, my basement and bedroom sensors follow the 1st floor pretty quickly.

If people want a air quality sensor that can upload data to the cloud (by default) or your local graphana, including source for an exporter, I'd check out airthings, their units are basically turnkey and can, but don't require) use a cloud.

I'm definitely shopping for an induction stove soon.

Do you use an exhaust hood vent when cooking? How long until the CO2 dissipates?

> but just be aware that not ALL gas stoves are problematic if set up correctly and burning cleanly.

There is no such thing as a clean burning gas stove. Even when not in use, they leak methane, and the majority of methane they leak is when they are not in use.

All gas stoves and ovens, regardless of cost or age, put levels of pollutants into indoor air that are greater than what is safe [1]. A $15k Wolf range is no better than a $1500 range.

The solutions are to either introduce a lot of ventilation, or switch to non combustion cooking.

1. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c04707

That article claims the stove is leaking ~1% of its burned fuel. Which seems really unlikely, and deeper in they seem to claim its largely from the ignition cycle. Which is still _really_ hard to believe even on my old stove which generally takes a few arc's before there is enough gas near the spark igniter to catch.

Even if you assume that 100% of the gas loss in the time between when I turn it on, and it goes whoosh and burns all that fuel is wasted (say up to a full second) I would then have to leave the stove on for less than 100 seconds at full blast or double that if I turn the flow down by 1/2 for that gas to equal 1% of the gas used during the cycle.

Anyway, compared with the volume of methane in human flatulence, I would be worried more about how good the bathroom ventilation is than how much of unburnt methane manages to avoid being burned and also sucked out the fume hood.

So, I too am skeptical about these home air sensors, I have one of the egg ones, that claims to measure PPM (CO2/etc). Yet it was spiking every morning, and at first I thought it was my wife putting on perfume, but it happens even when she isn't home in the morning... After watching it and what happens in my house, I suspect its largely measuring the humidity in the air from the shower.

Doing nothing but turning the shower on causes it to spike a few mins later and then gradually go down for the rest of the day. I guess I didn't think that the majority of the PPM "pollution" in my house is actually just water droplets. Thats a lot different than all the fly-ash or whatever they want you to think is the problem. (edit: just to be clear, I'm not denying indoor pollution, only that the sensor I have, while marketed as such, isn't actually measuring pollution if most of what its measuring is mist from the showerhead).

>they seem to claim its largely from the ignition cycle

Not so. In the abstract, they say that over three-fourths of their 1% estimate was from when the appliance is not in use ("steady-state-off"). See Figure 5.

>the sensor... isn't actually measuring pollution if most of what its measuring is mist from the showerhead

It's possible your sensor is actually measuring particulate aerosols created when the water droplets evaporate, leaving behind tiny particles due to dissolved solids.[1] The effect is similar to the "salt spray" aerosols formed by ocean wave action.

The long residence time you report ("gradually go down for the rest of the day") makes this almost guaranteed, since tiny airborne water droplets will evaporate in under one minute at a typical indoor humidity of 50%.[2]

Hope this helps!

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17195485/

[2] (see Table 2) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10867-020-09562-5...

"The data for steady-state-off measurements were long-tail skewed, with the top 5 stoves (9% of sampled units) emitting half (49%) of all steady-state-off emissions."

So, they have a couple leaky stoves in the equation and they extrapolate the data. But they never bother to determine what was leaking, which is actually a fairly simple thing to do since there are commercial leak detectors that are quite sensitive (https://www.southerncrossinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/...) to at home units that detect NG/propane/etc.

Plus there were quite a number of other WTF moments in the document that don't match with my understanding of current install practices around NG heaters/etc.

Not the least of which, is that if 1% of the usage (which is a lot!) is leaking that will easily show up on peoples meters and be something that can be smelled. Which granted most people don't run outside and check their meter in the morning after having turned off all their gas consumers but people do smell gas. I've known at least one person who ended up ripping up a bunch of the piping in their attic because it was leaking, but i'm guessing its more likely someone forgot about an old appliance with an actual pilot light or the data was categorized improperly.

Lets just say, that if you were honestly trying to run this study, don't you think you would want to go investigate some of the outliers to at least note that the top couple cases were broken valves, or rusted piping, or just debris in the gas line damaging/keeping the valve from closing (which is why modern gas codes require sediment traps) fully?

It's interesting to find out what the sensor may be actually measuring, and that it might actually be something, but I'm still left with the questions:

Is that stuff actually harmful?

If so, what could you even do about shower mist (at scale, as a reasonable thing to make a policy applying to all 7bn of us)?

And doesn't it still sound like the gas stove does not stand out as some special problem?

Or at least that, no article based on this source of data can be said to justify that conclusion.

Maybe the stove is doing something so much worse than farts and showers that it's worth giving up the utility and efficiency*, but this source of data does not show it.

* Efficiency including other gas appliances, ie, a gas clothes dryer is more efficient and interestingly, less fire risk than electric, but mostly the utility. Nothing else comes close to cooking with gas, it is simply by far the best tool for the job, and that is not an insignificant dismissable item.

> gas clothes dryer is more efficient and interestingly, less fire risk than electric

A regular electric dryer is 100% energy efficient, just like an electric resistance space heater. A heat-pump electric dryer can be 2-300% "efficient" (really COP) because it uses a heat pump.

A gas dryer is strictly less than 100% efficient - because like with any combustion device, some portion of the fuel is unburned and is sent out the exhaust/flue. Even the most expensive gas condensing modulating furnaces are only in the 90-97% combustion efficiency range.

Gas dryers are usually more time efficient though. They achieve such high temperatures (thanks to combustion) that they dry clothes 50% faster. And because gas is cheaper than electricity, they are cheaper to operate. The operational energy cost advantage vanishes when compared to heat pump electric dryers, however.

Electric dryers aren't 100% efficient if the source is the usual gas/coal/nuke/etc steam plant because the plant itself is only ballpark 50% efficient at converting the heat->electricity, then you take a percent or ten in transmission losses/etc. So, if the choice is pump the gas to a combined cycle gas plant, burn it, transmit the electricity to a resistivity heating dryer vs pump the gas directly to the dryer and burn it, the gas dryer will generally win.

Using a heat pump returns much of what is lost, but on balance in most places its sorta a wash. To be specific you have to look at the whole picture including the energy source, which requires actually picking a location/city and a particular product. And even saying maybe 100% of your power comes from PV+Wind (yah righ, haha) if you really want to lower the footprint the best plan is just to hang your cloths outside.

Then compare the parts & materials list of a gas dryer and a heat pump dryer.

You keep moving goal posts, but ok.

Yes heat pumps are more complicated. Likewise LEDs are more complicated than incandescent bulbs. Condensing furnaces are more complex than gravity furnaces. And nothing is simpler than a clothesline.

Higher efficiency usually involves higher complexity (EVs being an exception, although batteries themselves are pretty complex at tiny scales).

What's also great about heat pump and other condensing type dryers is that they are ventless. With a regular vented dryer, each time you run it you exhaust several thousand cubic feet of indoor conditioned air, which gets replaced by outdoor unconditioned (hot, cold, or dirty) air due to the depressurization of your house.

One way or another, you pay for reconditioning that air.

Depending on how much you do laundry, your local climate, and the price of energy, a ventless dryer (which can only be electric, naturally) can save you a lot in energy costs by avoiding that air exchange.

Methane (at the volumes we're taking about) does not have significant health effects; the paper you link speaks mostly about its effect as a greenhouse gas.

And I'm measuring my NO2 and it's within safe levels. So should I believe you or my own lying eyes?

Granted, a lot of this may be due to other effects (e.g, ventilation) and I agree my next stovetop won't be gas.

But clearly some setups are less problematic than others and it's not the case that everyone is poisoning themselves unless they go buy an electric tomorrow.

> So should I believe you or my own lying eyes?

That's a question only you can answer.

> But clearly some setups are less problematic than others and it's not the case that everyone is poisoning themselves unless they go buy an electric tomorrow

I didn't say everyone should go electric tomorrow. But people are exposing themselves to (IMO high) indoor air pollution by using gas stoves without running an extractor fan and opening windows.

A lot of people (everyone I know at least) only run the extractor to get rid of food smells, not for natural gas combustion byproducts, which is a mistake.

However, there is such a thing as an even dirtier burning gas stove. For instance, put a natural gas regulator on a propane supplied burner, or vice versa.

Also, even a properly tuned range will emit all sorts of things that are much worse than methane.

though any gas other than air will kill you at a high enough dose, methane is pretty extremely safe; wikipedia claims the major risk if you avoid blowing yourself up is that it can displace air and thus oxygen

>There is no such thing as a clean burning gas stove. Even when not in use, they leak methane, and the majority of methane they leak is when they are not in use.

How exactly does a gas stove leak methane (or anything else) when it's turned off, so there's no gas flowing?

The valves that open when the stove is operating are not perfectly sealed (they can't be). They allow a bit of methane to leak constantly.

Is this something about American-style gas stoves, or all gas stoves? Why would it be impossible to have a valve with a perfect (or reasonably perfect, obviously nothing mechanical is absolutely perfect) seal? A normal ball valve in a gas line is perfectly sealed; why would the valve in a stove be any different?

What magic world do you think we live in? Everything leaks at all times.

And when discussing policy and things at scale, you factor in the total picture where 80% of the individual examples will be one or more of: damaged, installed wrong, 35 years old, used incorrectly, cheaply designed, cheaply made, etc etc, not the perfect ideal lab example.

To be clear, I am firmly in the 'keep gas stoves' camp because they simply work the best for that job, the alternatives are not actually alternatives, and I don't think any of these articles actually show that they are harmful, or at least stand out from any other source of of stuff in the air.

But of course they leak. That isn't even remotely a remarkable claim. 'off' in the real world only ever means 'mostly off'.

How does a study that isolates the air around the stove in order to measure the emissions translate into the levels of pollutants that end up in the average home with a stove?

I should definitely fix my vent hood though.

How much did you pay for the meter? Last time I looked into this measurements for various metrics were basically useless (unless you're only looking at relative, not absolute numbers) unless you spent at least a few hundred bucks and occasionally calibrated it.

Also have a uHoo. Kind of hate the UI, but it seems like a decent sensor.

While my CO2 spikes during cooking on gas, fortunately NO2 remains low. 5-15 ppb range. My gas furnace is in the basement, several floors away from my apartment.

I think the big issue here is that renters do not get to pick and choose their appliances, so like other types of indoor health hazards this needs top-down regulation to make landlords replace gas with electric.

Well: https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/energy/3...

However, no politician will ever try to make landlords and homeowners angry by forcing retrofit, whatever they do it will only apply to new properties. I doubt there is anything other than government forcing them will make my landlord install new induction stove or solar panels, and may landlord is actually nice...

Many of the regulations are written so that if you do a major renovation you have to meet the new code.

Dear god please no, electric stoves are awful and idgaf about my lungs.

This is true for resistive electric stoves, which "pulse" on and off to achieve a certain heat level. Truly frustrating to cook with.

Modern induction stoves are much better (even better than gas, I hear, though I haven't used them extensively yet.)

What have you found challenging to cook? I moved from gas to glass top electric and had heard horror stories (had always had gas stoves before) but despite regularly cooking meals for the family I haven’t run into anything problematic beyond worrying my cast iron will scratch the glass top (no issues so far).

I had a lot of trouble cooking on a halogen electic -- pulse on, pulse off -- stove and all those problems went away when I got an induction. For years I thought I was a terrible cook but it was always that terrible electric cooktop. The only thing that cooktop did well was boil water.

The most frustating thing I tried to cook was good, crispy hashbrowns. Believe me, I tried everything and the results were always soggy, greasy horror. When I switched to induction (and replaced all my non-ferrous pans) the results were perfect everytime.

Induction seems to be the holy grail of cooking: electric (so it's clean and doesn't use fossil fuel from Russia), and highly controllable and repeatable. Everything else should just be banned, gas because it's polluting and problematic, and other types of electric because they just suck.

There are a few reasons people prefer gas: - heat output - heat distribution - responsiveness to inputs - durability/ease of cleaning

I'm in the same boat and have found glass top actually produces more heat than a previous gas range. This isn't surprising at all numerically but people seem to automatically assume gas ranges are hotter even though you can literally just compare the numbers. Distribution is roughly the same or even better - gas tends to heat in a ring (where the flames are) whereas my glass top electric heats the entire circle. This is true even for wok cooking (although I have a flat-bottomed wok).

Responsiveness to inputs is a real problem, there's a significant lag to temperature changes. Although, this is already something every cook has to deal with - different pans heat at different rates, and the amount of food in the pan is a factor too. You kind of just learn to account for it.

Surprisingly the last point has been the worst for me - I'm always worried about putting pans down softly, and still have a few scratches. Cleaning is really easy for stuff that will wipe off, and near impossible for everything else. Spills with sugar/starch content need to be cleaned immediately or they'll be burned in forever. You can sort of scrape stuff off with a razor blade but you risk scratching the surface. I'm not sure why, given that glass ought to be harder than metal, but it happens nonetheless. With older coil/gas stoves you had drip pans or could line underneath the hob with foil, and just throw the foil away when it got dirty.

But cooking-wise, no issues.

The temp change part makes sense and I can see how figuring out how to account for that across multiple pans could be challenging for folks that haven’t worked with it before.

Cleaning I’ve had no scratches using bar keepers friends to make a paste and scrape off, ymmv.

Came across this mother Jones article [1] on the success of the gas branding to promote gas stoves which was fascinating.

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/06/how-the-foss...

gas doesn't have higher heat output. this is the reason induction heats water much faster.

The major problem with resistive stoves is that they take a relatively long time to warm up and cool down.

Induction ranges are almost all really bad except at the very high end. I have one that will intermittently scorch a 4-inch diameter annulus in the center of the pan while leaving everything else untouched. The only thing it's practical for is boiling water, which is enough of a benefit for me to justify its existence.

My dad is a professional cook (retired, but used to own a restaurant in France). He only uses induction. While he did not get the cheapest one, he did not take the high end either.

One thing to consider is that quality of the pans and pots. Nowadays while they are all induction friendly, some provide a better heat distribution than other.

If asking my dad, the main benefit he sees is the control.

Electric stoves used to suck, low powered, annoying, and they made temperature control difficult.

New induction units are more powerful than gas, respond more quickly, and have temperature based controls. So you can blast and boil a quart of water more quickly, or set it to temperature and it will quickly approach it and maintain it, no more melted pots.

With induction the heat (or lack of) is literally inside the pot/pan. So it's already ahead of any combustion outside the pot/pan. Granted not much, but still it's not behind.

Also crazy easier to clean, nice flat surface, and there's not much heat outside the pot/pan to cook stuff on.

Depending on where you live you may be out of luck in the future. Some places are requiring them in new construction. Including California.

Hope that comes with a price drop. Gas is the only option right now if you want cheap and well-performing. Last I checked (maybe a year ago?) the cheapest induction ranges were well into the middle tier of prices. Which makes the fact that I keep seeing stuff about their tending to stop working after only a few years, or suffering from very-fragile surfaces that are easy to crack and ruin, even more of a turn-off.

Maybe the ranges are cheap. But the price of natural gas has soared over the past year. Right now, it's cheap again, but it seems that prices are a lot more volatile than electricity, which will benefit from alternative sources of production and storage.

in socal the price of natgas is soaring. they expect this next month to be 3x more expensive than last month which was also more expensive than before. went from $27 to $75 and probably now going to be $200+ for the same amount of use. we'll see. https://www.ocregister.com/2023/01/06/your-natural-gas-bills...

Yes, gas stoves are an unfortunate victim of climate policies enacted at the local level as city governments aim to ban all natural gas appliances in new construction in their misguided attempt to save the planet. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty they can do, but banning gas stoves is a ridiculous overstep.

I think it's not just about saving the planet. The gases and combustion are also a contaminant for human health. Especially children.

I don't have a beef with California for mandating this. I do prefer gas stoves. I can get over it.

Cities are able to take this action because they know they have no intention of building anything ever again, so the impact to actual residents and voters is zero. I should know: my city of Berkeley was the first to ban them. It is pure greenwashing.

The final insult is single-family home construction and remodel can elect to use gas if they want.

That's fine for your city, but sucks for those of us living in the midwest. I can't speak for every city, but our growing city likes to model its policies after CA policies, so we get thousands of newly built electric-only homes & apartments.

Well, if your city adopts every dumb idea from Berkeley, that's on you guys. I thought everyone knew we are nuts.

>but our growing city likes to model its policies after CA policies

Who elects your city leaders? This is your own fault. If your city liked to model its policies after Russian policies, or Saudi Arabian policies, would that be those countries' fault?

It's hard for a regulation like this to be retroactive. There are a lot of gas stoves in use. It's not feasible to replace them all, for various reasons. So, restricting to new construction makes sense.

Most bay area cities need to build more than they are, but I know that new construction in Berkeley is not zero. One of the last times I was there, I saw some new apartments going up.

> Cities are able to take this action because they know they have no intention of building anything ever again,

California cities don’t, since their choice now is between “approve enough new housing voluntarily” or “lose the ability to reject new housing entirely”.

Builder's remedy expansion under the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 has changed the landscape fundamentally.

Get back to me as soon as any "builder's remedy" project breaks ground.

If the threat of using the builder's remedy successfully gets cities to change behavior, isn't that working correctly despite no "builder's remedy project breaking ground"?

I'd imagine also that these things take years. First for the law to take effect, since that can't be immediate, and then for any enforcement of it to go through the courts.

I've read a few reviews of the uHoo saying they both 2 and put them in the same room and ending up with vastly different readings. I am not sure it's accurate.

What specific meter did you use? I want to try it myself.

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