• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

I don’t like our new induction hob

It varies. But a typical distribution might be 2x1500W, 2x1800W and 2000W. If it has a boost function you can add 200W to those. But they all have different powers for different sizes of pan.
 
Our normal glass topped one has 1600 and 1100 pairs.
So the induction ones are surely more expensive to run
In an energy conscious climate???
 
Those power ratings are the maximum it's capable of putting out, but you very rarely run an induction top at full power for long. If, to exaggerate the numbers a bit, the power output is 20% higher but it boils the pan of water in half the time, you've spent 60% of the energy to do it.

Most of the cooking that I used to do with the gas stove on full power, I use setting 6 on the induction hob.
 
Our four ring hob runs off a 13amp fused plug, so 3kw max in total.
I thought we were going to have problems with a lack of power but it’s been fine.
 
The most modern (and spendy) domestic induction hobs don't have rings as such: they tend to have a single zone and the hob will recognise the pan sizes and placements and you can have full power and boost anywhere on the hob. Ours has a dedicated circuit and needed more than a 13 amp plug though I forget how much.

If you cook a lot I do recommend the Quooker taps (or copies). It produces plenty of boiling water and is much cheaper to run than kettles or using the hob to boil water.
 
Roger, this made me think

But a typical distribution might be 2x1500W, 2x1800W and 2000W. If it has a boost function you can add 200W to those.

Is your supply to this hob sufficient for the loads, these hobs use switching power supplies to produce the higher frequency required and maybe you are getting a volt drop to the hob.
 
power output is 20% higher but it boils the pan of water in half the time, you've spent 60% of the energy to do it
How does power consumption compare when you need to slowly cook items? - inevitable vehicle analogy- I need to get the shopping from Tescos without speeding fines rather than win the Monaco GP!
 
How does power consumption compare when you need to slowly cook items? - inevitable vehicle analogy- I need to get the shopping from Tescos without speeding fines rather than win the Monaco GP!
Induction is more efficient than ceramic at any power output. The internet quotes 'up to 50%' in several places but I haven't got a primary source for that number. Regardless of exactly by how much, the induction cooker is doing a lot less work; it heats the pan directly whereas the ceramic hob heats an internal element and relies on that heat being conducted through the surface and into the pan. That's a lot more mass to be heated, which means more energy used to get the same result at the pan.
 
Roger, this made me think



Is your supply to this hob sufficient for the loads, these hobs use switching power supplies to produce the higher frequency required and maybe you are getting a volt drop to the hob.
Nope. Compared to our last place the incoming voltage is brilliant and rock steady.
 
I was cooking steak au poivre last night and had a lightbulb moment as to why I don’t like induction hobs. And it explains why aficionados rave over them especially their simmering. A normal ceramic hob ….the controls and their output is linear. Induction hobs are non-linear and a bit like a hockey stick with all the oomph at the top end
 
Which model of hob have you got Rog? My (limited) understanding of the tech is that they modulate the power by timing the off and on periods. I guess some manufacturers do this better than others. Ours feels very similar to gas in the way it behaves. I'm pretty familiar with commercial gas and often chefs run them at full blast and modulate by taking the pan off, especially if they also have a hot plate adjacent. The Athenor commercial ones (that is the only commercial one I have ever used) have knobs to control them and they behave in a very linear way. Three phase though.

Maybe just swap the induction out for normal electric if you prefer it. Life is too short to put up with stuff. Was the steak good?
 
Which model of hob have you got Rog? My (limited) understanding of the tech is that they modulate the power by timing the off and on periods. I guess some manufacturers do this better than others. Ours feels very similar to gas in the way it behaves. I'm pretty familiar with commercial gas and often chefs run them at full blast and modulate by taking the pan off, especially if they also have a hot plate adjacent. The Athenor commercial ones (that is the only commercial one I have ever used) have knobs to control them and they behave in a very linear way. Three phase though.

Maybe just swap the induction out for normal electric if you prefer it. Life is too short to put up with stuff. Was the steak good?
It's a Neff. Don't recall the exact model.

Interesting observation re the steak. We bought the first lot of fillet steak, on a Thursday, from our local butcher who source the meat from their own herd of cattle. They make a big thing about sourcing from their herd. It was very marbled and very, very delicious. This current batch of fillet was bought on a Saturday. Less marbling and an awful lot of water came out of the meat. The taste was nowhere near as good as the first lot. We think that they get in fillet from elsewhere for the 'weekend' crowd. Less quality...better profit margin.

So our plan is to get some more next Thursday to test our theory. It is a very good price....under £40 a kilo
 
AWFUL things! Touch buttons horrible and they have a mind of their own... switch off randomly. We have gone back to gas thank you.
Same, as soon as a pot drips a little too much and water touches the wrong button, the hooting and hollering starts. Wipe it all down, then wipe a bit more, restart the hob and off we go again, round two.

ps It was the ex's decision to have it fitted, so maybe that colours my opinion, too.
 
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If you cook a lot I do recommend the Quooker taps (or copies).
Useless fact of the day. Did you know that the Quooker tap was invented by a Dutchman on the run from the Nazis in WW2? The story goes that he and pal paddled across the North Sea in a stolen canoe from Holland to the Essex coast. I believe there's a small memorial on the coastline where they came ashore - Rob
 
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