Friday, January 13, 2023

OTOH, I've Seldom Been In A Rental...

...that had a gas stove. Unless it was an old house and the appliances had never been updated.

There was also the craze for all electric houses in the 50's and 60's.  It was a whole ad campaign to have an all-electric house.  Easier to leave appliances alone than to run in gas lines where they weren't before.  And there's removal: the Golden Child moved into a house that's now a rental mostly because it wouldn't sell.  They had a gas leak problem and found there was a gas line (leaking) to the range top location, which is electric.  So could be people don't like gas that much (I think the craze for expensive "professional stoves" a couple decades back may have raised the profile of gas stoves again.  But probably not much, as most of us couldn't afford those huge monsters.)

I am wondering how many houses have gas furnaces.  Still curious about that.  I'm guessing the furnace in the house I grew up in had a flue just like the water heater did, because the furnace was in a hall-closet.  I suppose that's better than a range hood, though it depends wildly on the quality of the range hood, I'm guessing.  Most don't pull that much, especially the ones put in by builders.  In apartments they tend to not vent to the outside anyway.  But most apartments I've seen have electric ranges anyway.

I dunno.  I'm kinda curious about the science in this.  I suspect the risk depends mightily on the space (small apartment, open floor plan house, etc.), the quality of the hood vent (if any), and such like.

OTOH, this is just a survey of 18,500 households.  I'm a bit dubious how truly representative that is.  Not that it really makes a difference.  Except:
Kentucky is not one of the "yellow states" on this map. And my own unscientific evidence drawn from Twitter is that elites (who else has time to spend on Twitter?) favor gas stoves.

Which kinda makes you wonder who the GOP thinks they're talking to:
I mean, besides people on Twitter, who else is doing the hourly on this news? I do think the GOP has a cunning plan: They're trying to distract from what they're not really accomplishing in Congress this week, or are going to accomplish for two years. And hoping nobody really notices when they cut Social Security and Medicare (or, rather, try to) and quite how quickly that debt ceiling debate is going to have to happen: Or it could be they're just that stupid.

1 comment:

  1. The stove kerfuffle is about status. Commercial kitchens use gas stoves, and high end home stoves try to mirror this. Since real chefs work in commercial kitchens with gas stoves, they must be better (I've heard plenty of arguments about the ability to finely adjust the flame and heat that can "only" be done with a gas stove. The high end stoves for homes try to look like commercial units. Viking, Thermidor, there are probably more. Those stoves in your kitchen are a status symbol, like the high end German car in the garage. If they are banned, how will people know that I appreciate fancy foods, even if I only boil water on my 6 burner, dual oven Viking stove, and do the rest of my cooking in the microwave.

    We always had electric until our previous house. It had a standard sized GE stove, but used gas. In upstate NY, gas was cheap and we heated our house for half of what it costs to heat our current house with propane in NH. The stove was fine, we did a lot of cooking with 4 kids but it wasn't noticeably different than all our previous electric ranges. Our current house had a kitchen renovation two owners ago, they expanded the kitchen into the dining room, and installed a Thermidor which is another upscale brand. It's no bigger than a standard 4 burner stove, but the realtor oohed over it when we had our allotted 15 minutes to to tour the house during the height of the pandemic (no second viewings, all bids due Sunday morning, than you!). Those with privilege, or aspirations to privilege (which describes a lot of the Twitter verse) don't wan to lose their status symbols. It would be like banning BMW's and Porsches.

    Really, they're just a damn stove.

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