Stove

There are several types of stoves, and many different brands and styles. Stoves can vary greatly in terms of price, style, looks, and performance and this site will help you to understand the differences, where to look and choose the stove that is right for you.

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Stove - Basics
There are many types of stoves. A kitchen stove is used to cook food, and refers to a device that has both burners on the top (also known as the cooktop or range or, in British English, the hob) and, often, an oven. A cooktop just has burners on the top and is usually installed into a countertop. A drop-in range has both burners on the top and an oven and hangs from a cutout in the countertop (that is, it cannot be installed free-standing on its own).In industrial usage, stove may refer to the place where fuel is combusted before being fed to a large heat consumer (such as an open hearth furnace.

Window to the Past
In Europe, the history of the kitchen stove begins in earnest in the 18th century. Before that time, people cooked over open fires fuelled by wood, which first were on the floor or on low masonry constructions. In the Middle Ages, waist-high brick-and-mortar hearths and the first chimneys appeared, so that cooks no longer had to kneel or sit to tend to foods on the fire. The fire was built on top of the construction; the space underneath was used to store and dry wood. Cooking was done mainly in cauldrons hung above the fire or placed on trivets. The heat was regulated by placing the cauldron higher or lower above the fire.

Open fire has three major disadvantages that prompted inventors even in the 16th century to devise improvements: it is dangerous, it produces much smoke, and the heat efficiency is poor. Attempts were made to enclose the fire to make better use of the heat that it generated and thus reduce the wood consumption. A first step was the fire chamber: the fire was enclosed on three sides by brick-and-mortar walls and covered by an iron plate. This technique also caused a change in the kitchenware used for cooking, for it required flat-bottomed pots instead of cauldrons. Only in 1735 did the first design that completely enclosed the fire appear: the Castrol stove of the French architect François Cuvilliés was a masonry construction with several fire holes covered by perforated iron plates. It is also known as a stew stove. Near the end of the 18th century, the design was refined by hanging the pots in holes through the top iron plate, thus improving heat efficiency even more.

Evolution
The first historical record of a stove being built, refers to a stove built in 1490, in Alsace, France. This stove was made entirely of brick and tile, including the flue. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) invented the iron furnace stove or 'Franklin Stove'.

Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist designed the first sootless kerosene stove.

Jordan Mott invented the first practical coal stove in 1833. Mott's stove was called the baseburner. The stove had ventilation to burn the coal efficiently.

British inventor, James Sharp patented a gas stove in 1826, the first successful gas stove to appear on the market.

The Carpenter Electric Heating Manufacturing Co. invented an electric stove in 1891. On June 30, 1896, William Hadaway was issued the first patent for the electric stove. In 1910, William Hadaway went on to design the first toaster made by Westinghouse, a horizontal combination toaster-cooker.

Second Industrial Revolution Stoves

The coal stove was cylindrical and made of heavy cast iron with a hole in the top, which was then enclosed by an iron ring. Gas stoves were found in most households by the 1920s with top burners and interior ovens. It was not until the late 1920s and early 1930s that electric stoves began to compete with gas stoves, however, electric stoves were available as early as the 1890s.

Microwave Ovens

The microwave oven was a by-product of another technology. It was during a radar-related research project around 1946 that Dr. Percy Spencer, an engineer with the Raytheon Corporation, noticed something very unusual.

Gas and electric stoves or any stoves use natural gas to provide heat.

All previous stoves were fuled by wood (or other biofuel), charcoal, or coal. The first gas stoves were developed already in the 1820s, but these remained isolated experiments. (James Sharp in Northampton, England, patented a gas stove in 1826 and opened a gas stove factory in 1836.) At the world fair in London in 1851, a gas stove was shown, but only in the 1880s did this technology start to become a commercial success. The main factor for this delay was the slow growth of the gas pipe network. The first gas stoves were rather unwieldy, but soon the oven was integrated into the base and the size reduced to fit in better with the rest of the kitchen furniture. In the 1910s, producers started to enamel their gas stoves for easier cleaning. A high-end gas stove called the AGA cooker was invented in 1922 by Swedish Nobel prize winner Gustaf Dalén. It is considered to be the most efficient design and is a much sought after kitchen "must have" in certain circles—despite the hefty price tag.

The AGA, and similar products such as the Rayburn Range are examples of always-on stoves which continue to burn fuel even when cooking is not being performed. Stoves (or ranges as they are also known) such as these are often used instead of boilers or furnaces to supply hot water and central heating to the rest of the house.

First attempts at building electrical stoves were made in the 1880s, but its real debut was at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, where an electrified model kitchen was shown. But like the gas stove, the electrical stove had a slow start, partly due to the unstable technology, and partly because first cities and town needed to be electrified. By the 1930s, the technology had matured and the electrical stove started to slowly replace the gas stove, especially in domestic kitchens.

The electrical stove technology has developed in several successive generations:

The first technology used resistor heating coils which heated iron hotplates, on top of which the pots were placed. Though the technology is slowly fading into obsolescence, coil ranges still provide the best durability out of all electric cooktop implementations.

In the 1970s, glass-ceramic cooktops started to appear. Glass-ceramic has a very low heat conduction coefficient, but lets infrared radiation pass very well. Electrical heating coils or infrared halogen lamps are used as heating elements. Because of its physical characteristics, the cooktop heats quicker, there is less afterheat, and only the plate heats up while the adjacent surface remains cool. Also, these cooktops have a smooth surface and are thus easier to clean, but they only work with flat-bottomed cookware and are markedly more expensive.

A third technology, developed first for professional kitchens, but today also entering the domestic market are induction stoves. These heat the cookware directly through electromagnetic induction and thus require pots and pans with ferromagnetic bottoms. Induction stoves also often have a glass-ceramic surface.

The iron hotplate technology is still in widespread use, although newly equipped kitchens nowadays usually get a stove using one of the later technologies.

Electrical oven technology has also advanced: in the convection oven, a stream of hot air is used for heating food instead of the heat produced by coils directly as in a conventional electrical oven.

Gas and electric stoves are the most common today in western countries. Both are equally mature and safe, and the choice between the two is largely a matter of personal preference and preexisting utility outlets: if a house has no gas supply, adding one just to be able to run a gas stove is an expensive endeavor. In particular, professional chefs often prefer gas cooktops, for they allow them to control the heat more finely and more quickly. On the other hand, chefs often prefer electric ovens because they tend to heat food more evenly. Today's major brands offer both gas and electric stoves, and many also offer dual-fuel stoves combining gas cooktops and electric ovens.

Ovens and stoves, throughout history, have one thing in common, they will burn the person who comes in contact with their hot metal surfaces, for instance, the oven rack's front edge. Devices to protect the hands, such as oven gloves, have been developed, but need to be used consistently, to be effective; so people still get burned. Recently, a device has been invented by Burt Shulman of Wappingers Falls, NY, called the Cool Touch Oven Rack Guard, which is a fabric strip that attaches along the front edge of the oven rack and stays in the oven. If a person touches it, even at 500 deg. F., they will not be burned. - The fabric is made from a modern synthetic fiber called Nomex - which can withstand 500 deg. F. temperatures and has both low thermal conductivity and thermal mass. - These material properties reduce the heat transferred to the skin, during the "touch', so no burn results. See independent

Modern corn, pellet or biofuel stove

A corn stove is a type of pellet stove which is a type of biofuel stove. The shelled dry kernel of corn, also called a corn pellet, creates as much heat as a wood pellet but generates more ash. "Corn pellet stoves and wood pellet stoves look the same from the outside. Since they are highly efficient, they don't need a chimney; instead they can be vented outdoors by a four-inch pipe through an outside wall and so can be located in any room in the home." Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy

A pellet stove uses small, biological fuel pellets which are renewable and very clean-burning. Home heating using a pellet stove is an alternative currently used throughout the world, with an extremely fast growth rate in Europe. The pellets are made of renewable material –- typically wood sawdust or off-cuts. There are currently more than half a million homes in North America using pellet stoves for heat, and probably a similar number in Europe. The pellet stove typically uses a feed screw to transfer pellets from a storage hopper to a combustion chamber. Air is provided for the combustion by an electric blower. The ignition is automatic, using a stream of air heated by an electrical element. The rotation speed of the feeder and the fan speeds can be varied to modulate the heat output.

How it works
A stove generates heat by one or more of the following means:

Burning of natural gas,

liquefied gases (e.g., butane, propane)

heating oil

biofuel such as wood, coal, corn, or synthetic heating pellets

Electrically, by either

electrical resistance (by way of a heating element)

induction

The Techniques
Modern stoves are typically considered a basic appliance in homes in developed nations. Along with the refrigerator, a stove is usually found in the kitchen.

Many modern stoves typically have from three to eight burners or plates of various sizes and power levels; an oven; and knobs, for controlling the heat of the burners and the oven. The control knobs may be located on the backsplash, on the cooktop, or on the upper part of the front of the stove.

Middle-to high-end models also may feature locking mechanisms for the oven door; convection cooking; automatic cleaning mechanisms, which raise the oven temperature to more than 260 degrees Celsius (500 degrees Fahrenheit) and reduce accumulated food spills to ash or a catalytic oven lining which aids in burning off spills; one or more timers; and a digital display. Many can even accommodate automatically raising and lowering the oven temperature to preset levels at preset times

Iron stoves, aka wood stoves

An open fireplace is a very inefficient form of heat for two reasons. First, in order to prevent air, and therefore smoke, from spilling back into the room you need a large updraft pulling air (and therefore heat) out the chimney. This both pulls heat away and pulls air from the rest of the house into the fire and then up the chimney. A fireplace consumes 200 to 600 cubic feet of air per minute, more for a very large fire. A mostly closed off fireplace, for example a modern fireplace with glass doors closed will use 50-150 cubic feet per minute. High airflow creates a draft which pulls heated air out of the house to be replaced with cold air leaking in from the outside. Second, in an open fire some of the combustible gas coming off the wood escapes does not ignite and is lost. To resolve these problems iron stoves came into use in the 18th century.

An early, and famous, example of an iron stove is the Franklin stove, a wood burning stove said to have been invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1742. It had a labyrinthine path for hot exhaust gases to escape, thus allowing heat to enter the room instead of going up the chimney. The Franklin stove, however, was designed for heating, not for cooking. Benjamin Thompson at the turn to the 19th century was among the first to present a working iron kitchen stove. His Rumford stove used one fire to heat several pots that were also hung into holes so that they could be heated from the sides, too. It was even possible to regulate the heat individually for each hole. His stove was designed for large canteen or castle kitchens, though. It would take another 30 years until the technology had been refined and the size of the iron stove been reduced enough for domestic use. Stewart's Oberlin stove was a much more compact iron stove, patented in the U.S. in 1834. It became a huge commercial success with some 90,000 units sold in the next 30 years. In Europe, similar designs also appeared in the 1830s. In the following years, these iron stoves evolved into veritable cooking machines with flue pipes connected to the chimney, oven holes, and installations for heating water. The originally open holes into which the pots were hung were now covered with concentric iron rings on which the pots were placed. Depending on the size of the pot or the heat needed, one could remove the inner rings.

By controlling the inflow of air to allow only what a fire needs to burn, iron stoves reduce the consumption of air to a mere 15-30 cubic feet per minute (this figure is for a modern stoves. All wood stoves operate on the principle of controlled air flow but their consumption will vary).

Modern wood stoves also increase the completeness of combustion. More expensive stoves use a catalytic converter which causes the gas and smoke particles not actually burned to combust. Other models use a design that includes firebox insulation, a large baffle to produce a longer, hotter gas flow path and pre-heating the air prior to its entering the combustion chamber.

In the US, the EPA created stricter emissions standards in the late 1980s. Maximum smoke output is limited to 7.5 grams per hour and some stoves achieve as little as 1 to 4 grams per hour. Put differently, this is roughly 90% less smoke than older stoves, which equates to nearly zero visible smoke from the chimney. This is largely achieved through causing the most possible material to combust, which results in a net efficiency of 60 to 70% as contrasted to zero to 30% for a fireplace. (net efficiency is the amount of heat energy transferred to the room compared to the amount contained in the wood, minus any amount central heating must work to compensate for the airflow problems.

Control
In supplying power to major appliances such as stoves, and dryers - they often have need for both 220V and therefore to protect the wiring UL or CSA approval check for these when shopping , also upon installation of a wood stove before usage , some area require a fire dept inspection and approval to insure proper working order. In some state federal BOCA default or local building codes are needed for installation approval.

Places to Go
Stoves can be purchase at any local appliance store, mass merchant or pellet wood stove specialty store or manufacturer direct in some cases.

Maintenance Tips
It is important to keep your stove well maintained. Here are some tips that can help:

Wipe down the range top. A clean surface prevents scratches and stops acidic food from eating away at the appliance finish.

Clean up thoroughly after a boil-over. If necessary, unclog burner ports on a gas range with a straight pin. Don't use a toothpick, which can break off in a port.

Run the self-cleaning cycle after removing racks (they discolor at high temperatures).

Before you Buy
Consider buying a self-cleaning oven. They use less energy for normal cooking because of higher insulation levels. However, if you use the self-cleaning option more than once a month, you will end up using more energy than you will save from the extra insulation.

About 58% of American households cook with electricity, but gas cooking is making a steady comeback. Gas ovens use much less energy compared to their electric counterparts because the fuel is used directly for cooking. A gas appliance costs less than half as much to operate as an electric one, provided it is equipped with electronic ignition instead of a pilot light.

With electric cook tops, there are a number of new types of burners on the market: solid disk elements, radiant elements under glass, halogen elements, and induction elements.

Solid disk elements and radiant elements under glass are easier to clean, they take longer to heat up, and use more electricity.

Halogen elements and induction elements are more efficient than conventional electric coil elements. Induction elements require that you use only iron or steel pots and pans. Aluminum cookware will not work with induction elements.

The range hood should ventilate to the outside and not simply recirculate and filter the cooking fumes. This is especially important with gas ranges. But also be careful about the sizes of fans -- too large a fan can waste energy and cause back-drafting of combustion gases into the house. This is a major concern with large downdraft ventilation fans used with some cook-tops and ranges. Ask about make-up air ducts available for these models.


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