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How and Why I moved my gas meter.

In preparation for our remodel, I had to upgrade and move my gas meter.  This is the story of how and why we did it.

Why did you move your gas meter?

My current gas meter is in the way of what will be my new front door.  Obviously, it’d be an imposition on guests to make them step over the meter when coming in the house but it’s also not to code.  Code requires 3 feet of clearance from any passive air intake and 10 feet from any mechanical air intake.  There are a lot of other placement rules too, PSE puts them all in a handy guide.

Why did you upgrade your gas meter?

My house originally had the model A250 gas meter.  The A250 is rated up to 300,000 BTU/hr.  A BTU or British Thermal Unit equates to the amount of energy required to heat one pound of water from 39 to 40 degrees Celsius.  In order to calculate the BTU used, you add all of the load of all of the appliances in your home that use gas.  If it’s a load that’s always on like a furnace or water heater, you use the full amount, if it’s a transient load like an oven or fireplace, then you take 75% of the load.
Here’s the breakdown for my house:

Even with the 25% deduction, I’m still over the 300k BTU limit.  My new meter is the A450 which is good for up to 540k BTU.  This is sounds like a lot more, but a tankless water heater is a 200k BTU load which means my total gas usage will eventually be 491,250 BTU/hr.  This means I have 40k left if I ever want to add a space heater to my deck.

How do you move your meter?

First thing you do is call Puget Sound Energy at 1-888-321-7779.  They will tell verify your load calculations and also check to see if the line coming to your home can handle the new load.  I got lucky, my house has a steel pipe going to it that’s worth up to 1,000,000 BTU/hr.  New homes get a plastic pipe that caps out at 400k BTU.
PSE will assign you a project number and then you’ll be contacted by Infrasource, PSE’s exclusive contractor for doing the line move.  Infrasource will come to your home, do a site survey and work with you to find a new location for the meter.  They’ll call you with an estimate.  PSE subsidizes the cost of the move if you’re upgrading service.  Once you agree on the price, they’ll mail you a contract.  You send it back signed and they’ll schedule the move.
PSE will only handle the work on the outside of the house.  Work done on the inside needs to be done by a licensed contractor.  This work can be done by plumbers, or HVAC companies.  As usual, get multiple bids.  In my case, I got two: one for $2,345 and one for $900.  I went with the $900 and was happy I did.  The contractor you choose will need to pull a permit and you’ll have to ge tthe work inspected before PSE will let you connect the new meter.  
The easiest way to do this is to have the interior contractor do all of the work on the inside of the house without taking your gas offline.  They can get the work inspected, and then have them come back when PSE does the outside work.  If you show the Infrasource crew your signed permit, they’ll connect the new meter to the pipe.  Once all of the work is done, PSE will send a technician to relight your appliances.

How does Infrasource actually move the meter?

Infrasource digs two holes in your hard, one where the existing line is and one where the meter is going to be.  They then use a tool called a “mole” to bore a tunnel between those two points.  They then run a new plastic pipe between the two locations.  When they’re done, all you’re left with is a white cap in your yard where they moved the gas line.

How did it go for you?

My job ran into a few snags.  First off, they accidentally cut my water line.  The ground in my yard was really hard so they used a pneumatic spade to break up the dirt.  In the process, they did a number on my water line.  The yellow pipe in the picture is the original gas line, the mangled copper line below it is what’s left of my water line, that copper line should be straight and round.
As soon as they broke the line, they tried to turn off my water.  Unfortunately, my house had an old style water shutoff so we had to call the water emergency line for the city and have them come out and turn the water off.  The woman from the city water department was awesome, not only did she turn my water off, she replaced the valve with the modern one and helped the gas company fix my leak.  You can see the patched line and the new gas line in this picture:
When it was all said and done, I had my new meter installed and you couldn’t even tell any work had been done.
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How I Went Appliance Shopping

We’re building our dream kitchen but that doesn’t mean we wanted to pay nightmare prices for our new appliances.  I had spent months doing the research on which appliances I wanted, why wouldn’t I do a little work to get the best price?

There are many appliance stores in the Seattle area and I quickly narrowed down to three that would work for me, but let’s go through all of the options (that I know of):

Appliance Stores

Nationwide Sellers:

These are the big brands we’re all used to seeing, they’re the big box stores.  They don’t carry the high end brands but you can still get nice brands here.  Home Depot just started carrying Electrolux and the Kenmore brand is pretty good.

Sears: Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are that they’re still in business.  At one point Sears was the largest appliance retailer in the US, they’re also have their own in house brand Kenmore.  Kenmore is the most popular appliance brand in the US.  It’s also not a real brand, Kenmore appliances are rebranded appliances from other companies, often at a lower price.  The trick to Kenmore is finding out who makes the actual appliance.  In my case, I wasn’t interested in the Kenmore brand.  For other appliances, think of Sears as your baseline.  Sears is the most you’ll ever pay for an appliance.  The local stores understand that Sears is the most popular seller and they’re not stupid, they’ll stay competitive.  Of the national stores, I definitely think Sears has the most knowledgeable sales people but it’s been hit or miss for me.

Best Buy: I didn’t even look at Best Buy, they’re prices are normal, there selection is slim compared to the other stores and I’ve never had a good customer service experience at Best Buy.

Home Depot/Lowes: These guys sell a lot of appliances and are usually running some sort of special like free shipping or some other discount.  I didn’t spend too much time here because the selection is slim and they don’t carry any of the appliances I want.

Local Sellers:

The local sellers run a wider range of brand than the big box stores, don’t be intimidated by the show rooms, while they tend to focus on the higher end brands, they can all order the lower priced brands as well.  Usually at a better price than the big box stores.

Albert Lee: Albert Lee is the largest of the local sellers with five stores.  You’ll get your best price with them during the November warehouse sale, usually the first weekend in November.  Albert Lee carries BlueStar, not Capital.


Almvigs: Located above the Whole Foods at 65th and Roosevelt, the store is small but packed full of good brands.  The staff knows what they’re doing and the owner is usually there too.  Almvigs has lots on display and they’re willing to order from companies they don’t normally do business with.  Almvigs carries Capital.

Basco: Basco isn’t really local, they’re a Portland based seller with a Seattle warehouse.  Their Portland sales floor is gorgeous.  They can sell to Seattle but they don’t do delivery.

Metropolitan Appliances: Metropolitan Appliances is in SODO, they used to be called “Direct Buying Services”, they changed their name to disassociate with the “Direct Buy” scam.  Metropolitan has a lot of good stuff on display, and they’re able to get a lot more.  MA carries Capital.

Seattle Home Appliances: I didn’t spend much time in here, they don’t carry as many of the high end brands and didn’t carry Blue Star or Capital and when I asked, they were pretty indifferent about it.  They described Blue Star as ok, and didn’t understand why people like Capital.  They seemed pretty defensive aobut the gap.

Online:

I looked at a few online websites, but decided I didn’t want to go there.  The pricing is better, but if something goes wrong, you’re pretty much on your own.

How I bought my appliances

I limited myself to Albert Lee, Almvigs, and Metropolitan.  They carried the brands I was interested in (BlueStar and Capital).  I had been to each store a few times and had been working with a saleman at each place.  I gave each salesman my list of appliances and asked them to e-mail me their best prices.
Albert Lee gave me good pricing, but said their best prices come during their warehouse sale and I should wait for that if I can.  The problem with this is that they don’t know what’s going to be on sale during the warehouse sale and I thought i twas unlikely that the specific range I wanted would be on sale (not many people order ranges with a grill).  I wasn’t willing to wait until the beginning of November when my delivery needed to be at the end of November.  Finally, Albert Lee was unwilling to order the Modern Aire hood that I wanted.  I didn’t want to have to buy the hood separately, I wanted a single point of contact for dealing with problems.
Almvigs was definitely the most pleasant experience, when I asked them about the right time to buy the salesman said “I have to give my best price every day”, and then followed up with it.  Almvigs pricing was the best of the three, by quite a bit.  They were even willing to store my appliances until I was ready for them (three months later).
Metropolitan Appliances is where I spent most of my time looking at the options because they had so much Capital equipment on display.  They were also willing to order the hood but their pricing was the worst of the three.  They were off by several thousand dollars from the other two.  I was really surprised at how bad the pricing was, but since I had been working with the rep for a few month, I decided to give him another chance.  I let him know that he wasn’t competitive in his pricing and the response was less than optimal.  Metropolitan wanted me to give them the other companies bid so that they would beat it by 10%.  They wanted to make sure it was a real apples to apples comparison.  When I asked for clarification, he said he wanted to make sure that I wasn’t getting a floor model or open box.  I thought that was insulting, as if I didn’t know what I was buying, but it doesn’t matter, business is business.  I responded that I wanted him to give me his best price and that I didn’t want to give him the other bid.  Why should I do their work for them?  Best case, I get a bid that’s better than 10% off, worst case, I get the already very good bid from Almvigs.  MA responded with a competitive bid but it was still $500 more than Almvigs.

How much did I save?

I think I did pretty well, the chart below compares what I paid to the list price as well as what I could have paid if I had bought online.  The online prices are the lowest price for each item on Google Shopping from a 5 star seller.  The chart below is the percentage difference of what I paid from list, online, and online after I factor tax into the local sale.  When the percentage is negative, I paid less, when it’s positive, I paid more.  In the end, I saved nearly 14% off of list price overall and paid 5% less than online.  Of course, the third column assumes you don’t pay the “use tax” after buying online.  If you’re not worried about the use tax, then I would have saved 4% buying online.  Items are listed in terms of most expensive to least expensive, and while I realize anyone could reverse engineer my actual prices off of this chart, I’d rather not publish that.  The 4.18% difference is well less than $1,000, I think that’s a worthwhile fee to pay for shopping locally and having a local company responsible for everything going right.

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This sucks! Kitchen Ventilation

My new range is a 36″ beast with four high power burners and an indoor grill.  To get the most out of this range without setting off the smoke alarms required careful planning around how I’m going to vent.  Making this harder is that I’m putting the range on an island.  This means I lose the advantage of having a back wall to keep the smoke from drifting too far.

On top of this, I really don’t like range hoods, I’m not sure anybody does.  They’re very noisy, they tend not to work (how many times have you triggered your smoke alarm when cooking?), and they block the view and interrupt the openness of my new kitchen/dining area.

This leads to a collection of design goals that feel like they’re at odds with each other:

  1. Quiet
  2. Powerful
  3. Effective
  4. Aesthetic
Quiet
To get quietness, I moved the blower to the outside of the house.  Now, I won’t have to deal with the sound of the motor inside the house.  Unfortunately, the motor only accounts for some of the noise.  The air movement is also a noise generator.  I have a couple of options there.  I can move less air, which contradicts goals three and four, or I can quiet the air movement.  
The Abakka external blower
Plan  B sounds better, to quiet the sound of the air movement, I’m doing to things: Using a big duct and adding a silencer.  My new hood will have a 10″ round duct, a standard home range usually has a 6″ duct.  I’m going from 25 square inches of space to 78 square inches, a 2.7x increase in space.  I’m also adding a Fantech silencer.  The silencer is a muffler that also further reduces the sound the air makes as it travels.
Ignore everything but the “LD Silencer”

Powerful:
This one is easy, because I moved the blower to the outside of the house, I can install the most powerful one I can find.  In this case, that’s a 1400 CFM (cubic feet per minute) blower.  This blower has the power to clear all of the air from my house every 18.3 minutes.  To put this in perspective, the standard microwave hood is closer to 200 CFM.  The downside to a 1400 CFM motor is that building code requires me to add Make-Up Air (MUA) to my kitchen.  MUA is a mechanism for replacing the air that is removed from the kitchen by the vent.  I’ll write about this in detail once I’ve finalized on a solution.

Effective:
All of that air sucking wouldn’t do me any good if it didn’t actually capture the effluent coming off of the stove.  To make that easier, I’m over-sizing my capture area.  Think of the capture area as the overhang of the hood.  If smoke gets into the capture area, then the blower can suck it out of the house.  My range is 36″ wide by 24″ deep.  My range hood is 42″ wide by 30″ deep, an extra 3″ on each side.  This, combined with the powerful blower should provide an effective air removal system.

To further enhance the effectiveness, I want a hood that uses baffles instead of a mesh filter.  The filter is responsible for keeping the grease from clogging up the ventilation duct.  The two types of common filters are baffles and a mesh.  Mesh filters are usually made out of steel or aluminum and work by forcing the effluent to go through small holes in the mesh, the grease gets trapped in the metal.  Baffles work by forcing the air to turn and bend around the metal, when the air bends it accelerates and the grease spins off.  Both types of filters are cleaned in the dishwasher, but over time the mesh filters lose their effectiveness because they can’t be cleaned as thoroughly (certainly not as easily).

Aesthetic:
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have a hood at all.  I think they’re generally ugly and putting one on my island means I am interrupting the openness of my living space.  I can’t get away from the fact that I’m going to have a large hood, it will have a 10″ wide duct and will be 42″ wide at it’s widest point.  Instead, I went with a hood that tries to be as simple and smooth lined as possible.
In the end, I chose the Modernaire PSI-16
The PSI-16 is custom built when ordered in California by Modernaire.  It meets all of my requirements and has a small horizontal profile so hopefully it won’t be too overbearing.  It also has some other features I really like.  The lights and the blower are on infinite knobs so you can very their settings precisely.  With a 1400 CFM blower, I want a lot of control so I only suck as much as I have to.
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My new range: Capital Culinarian 36″ with Grill

We ordered the new appliances for our kitchen last weekend.  I’ll make a general post on how I bought the appliances, and I’ll also put up another post describing my other appliances but I thought the range deserved its own post.

 

In a previous post, I talked about why I chose a gas range over an induction range.  Gas ranges come with two different type of burners: open burners and sealed burners.
Image of a sealed burner.
Sealed burners are designed to prevent spills from entering the internals of the oven.  Fans claim they’re easier to clean but they have three attributes I don’t like.
  1. Flame Pattern
  2. Power
  3. Cleaning
Flame Pattern: Because the burners are sealed, the flame doesn’t shoot straight up but instead comes out of the sides of the burner.  This creates a heat “donut” on the pan, rather than the more even heat of an open burner.
The fine folks at Eurostoves made a video demonstrating the difference in heat pattern between the open burner Capital Culinarian and sealed burner ranges:

 

Power: For reasons I don’t understand, open burner ranges are available with more power than a closed burner.  We do a lot of searing in our house and I wanted a burner that would get really hot.  I also hate waiting for water to boil.  Further, I’ve never heard anyone complain that their range was too powerful.
Cleaning: In my previous house, I had a sealed burner range, whenever anything spilled over, it meant scrubbing and scrubbing to get the junk off and I always struggled getting the very edge where the burner sits on the range clean.  With an open burner, spillover will fall into a catch tray which can be covered with aluminum foil.  Cleaning that seems easier but I’ll put up an update when I actually have the range and have to clean it.
Given my desire for an open burner, I had three companies to choose from: Blue Star, Capital, and American Range.
I quickly dismissed the American Range, when I saw it in person I found it clunky and I wasn’t happy with the build quality.  I also didn’t like how poor the information on their website was, there were typos and inconsistencies between what the website said and what the vendors said.  The American Range Performer (American Range’s open burner range) is also relatively new and hasn’t been on the market too long so it was hard to find actual reviews of it.
The competition came down to Blue Star versus Capital and I hate to say it, but I don’t have a good reason for choosing one over the other.  They’re extremely competitive ranges with marginal differences between them.  The Blue Star has two high power 22,000 BTU burners, a simmer burner and a 15,000 BTU standard burner.  The Capital has four 23,000 BTU burners and claims that they can all simmer.  Reviews online make me believe the Blue Star wins when it comes to simmering but that’s not a very common use case and I’m convinced I can get a good simmer on the Capital as well.  Both ranges offered a grill and both have infrared broilers.
The infrared broiler is a feature I’m really excited to try.  The infrared broiler produces 1800° F heat.  A traditional broiler is closer to 550°-600° F.  I want an 1800° F broiler to be able to cook steaks the way Ruth’s Chris does.  Ruth’s Chris has custom designed broilers that cook both sides at 1800° at the same time.  Mine at home won’t be quite the same, but I’m hoping to get close.
This decision took months, In the end, I chose the Capital Culinarian for a couple of reasons: I liked the fit and finish more and I also liked the flexibility of having all four burners be the same.
Here’s a stock photo of my new range.  I’m looking forward to having a grill inside the house!  Grilling indoors adds a lot of complication, you need to plan your ventilation solution around the extra smoke that grilling will produce.  I won’t be able to do super messy grilling like you would with an outdoor grill because the cleanup will be more work, no sugary marinades or very greasy meats.  What I will be able to do is easily mix grilled foods with other foods when cooking.  I think the first meal will be steaks cooked with the infrared broiler, grilled asparagus, and sauteed mushrooms.
If you’re curious about how I’m venting this range, see my ventilation post.
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Induction vs. Gas: Picking a range

As part of our remodel, we get to pick new appliances.  We currently have an electric glass top and it’s awful.  Slow response time and imprecise heat control.  When looking at appliances for the new kitchen I knew I wanted anything other than an electric range.  There are two heating technologies worth looking at when picking a new range: Gas and Induction.

Gas Burner (Wikipedia)

Gas
People have been cooking with gas since the 1820s, it’s about as simple as it gets: gas burns, burning gas makes heat, heat cooks food.  Not a whole lot has changed in gas ranges since the 1820s, the mechanics are basically the same: gas flows through a valve into a burner which disperses the gas and burns it in a pattern.  Since the 1820s the ranges have gotten more efficient and safer, we have electric igniters, safety valves and smarter burner designs.  Gas is also the way most restaurants cook.  My last house had a gas range and I really miss it.

Induction in action (GE)

Induction
Induction heats in a way that’s completely different from the traditional electric or gas range.  Induction heats by inducing heat in the cooking vessel rather than transferring heat to the cooking vessel.  In induction cooking, the pot itself generates the heat!  Induction works by using a high power electromagnet in the hob (the equivalent of a burner on a gas range) induces heat in the pan.

Inside of an induction hob (Wikipedia)

Induction is very responsive, heats up quickly, cools down quickly and since it only generates heat in the pan is super efficient.  The picture at the top of this section is of an induction hob that’s not melting ice while boiling water.  Induction is very popular in Europe and Asia and is developing quite the following in the US.  One of the odd limitations of induction is that it requires pans to have some iron content.  This is because induction only works with pans that respond to magnets.  In my case this isn’t a big deal, all of my pans are either All-Clad or some form of cast iron (I’ll have a future post on cookware).

Which one?
In looking for a new range, I had a few requirements:

  1. Responsive – Quick to heat, quick to cool.
  2. High Heat – We do a lot of searing, so I need to be able to get a pan really hot. 
  3. Reliable – Nobody likes calling a service company.
Responsiveness
I bought a portable induction hob to try induction out.  Turns out I love it.  It’s super responsive, as I turn the knob, heat goes up and when I turn the knob down, so does the heat.  I’m able to quickly go from bringing something to a boil to a light simmer.
Gas is also very responsive, gas ranges have infinite controls.  Turn the knob up, more gas comes out, turn the knob down less gas comes out.  I had a gas range in my previous house and I loved the responsiveness of it.
High Heat
People rave about how fast induction causes water to boil but I’m going to be living with this decision for at least 10 years so I wanted something more than anecdotal evidence.  So let’s do some math:
Gas range power is measured in BTU/hr while induction ranges are measured in Watts.  Thankfully, we can convert from one to another.  
I know that more BTU means more power so I went looking for the most powerful gas range I could find.  My search brought me to the Capital Culinarian which has 23,000 BTU burners.  To put that in perspective, I looked at a random GE range and it had a 15,000 BTU “power boil” burner, making the Capital substantially more powerful.  Just for fun, we’ll run the math on the GE range too.
When I mean run the math, I mean ask Wolfram Alpha.  Wolfram says that 23,000 BTU/hr is equivalent to 6,741 Watts.  Wolfram also says that 15,000 BTU/hr is the same as 4,396 Watts.
The most powerful induction cook top I could find had a boost mode that would output up to 4,600 Watts.  It’s a Thermador and it can do that in “boost” mode, where it steals energy from the other burners.  A normal burner is around 2,600 Watts.
So on the surface, the gas range is clearly much more powerful right?
WRONG!  Induction is much more efficient than gas at transferring heat, so we can’t just compare the straight up wattage, we have to account for the efficiency differences.
According to the US Department of Energy, induction is 84% efficient.  Gas ranges are a measly 39.9% efficient.
So now we need to adjust for efficiency: 
Gas (High Power Range): 6,741Watts * 39.9% = 2,690 Watts.
Gas (Normal Range): 4,396 Watts * 39.9% = 1,754 Watts.
Induction (High Power): 4,600 Watts * 84% = 3,864 Watts.
Induction (Normal Power): 2,600 Watts * 84% = 2,184 Watts.
Induction in boost mode blows the gas away and a “normal” induction range is more powerful than a “normal” gas range.

Induction is clearly more powerful, but I think it’s a moot victory.  I’m looking at a high end gas range or a high end induction and I don’t think it matters at that level which is more powerful.
Reliability
This is a tough one.  I couldn’t find any data I’d really trust on reliability but I will say that the gas ranges I’m looking at have minimal electronics and user serviceable parts.  From a reliability stand point, there’s almost nothing to break on a Blue Star or Capital.
The induction cook tops are full of electronics which means more that can break.
I think the gas range wins this one, but again, I don’t have any real data on this and it bugs me that I couldn’t find any.
Conclusion
I’m going with a gas range for a couple of reasons:  I like the reliability aspects, and while this may sound silly, I want knobs and not buttons.  The only induction range I could find that has knobs instead of buttons is made by viking and would cost me more than a gas range.  Further, I like the flexibility of gas, while I don’t have any aluminum pans right now, i do have a round bottom wok which wouldn’t work very well on an induction range.  
If my house didn’t have gas plumbed to it already, or if cost were a more significant factor, I think I’d choose induction and be very happy with it.