When we installed our kitchen 9 years ago, I was extremely excited. Our house was not hooked up to any gas line, so I had been cooking on an electric cooktop for years. But when we renovated, we added a gas line, purely so I could get my gas cooktop that I really wanted. We purchased a gorgeous 36 inch, 5 burner cooktop from a well-known brand and installed it. Now I had an electric cooktop for dairy cooking and a gas one for the meat side of my kitchen.
I recall how fun it was to cook on it at first. However, over time, I noticed that is didn't actually cook my food any faster than my electric cooktop. In fact, during the past year or two, it became a lot more frustrating to cook on my once-amazing cooktop. Maybe the unit was dying? It got to the point where if I needed to bring something to boil quickly, I put my pot on my electric cooktop instead. My electric cooktop could bring the water to boil in half the time that my gas cooktop could. That is not normal. What was wrong with my cooktop? I decided that it would have to be replaced. That might be expensive, but it was becoming necessary.
I decided to try one last attempt to rescue it. I went online and looked up reasons that could cause my flame to be so low. I tried every possible fix. I cleaned every piece that I could access. My husband walked into the house one evening, only to find me unscrewing parts of the cooktop unit and realized this might be an issue. He helped me clean out parts inside the cooktop, but it still wasn't improved. There was only one other possible fix and if it didn't work, we would have to replace it. The regulator could be the problem. Every gas appliance has a regulator attached to help even out the gas flow and prevent gas build up and other dangerous issues. We called our plumber and had him come check it out. It turned out, the regulator on our cooktop was actually missing a part; a little spring that essentially allows more gas to flow through to the unit. The installer (no, he wasn't one of the regular tradesmen that we regularly work with) had removed the spring when he installed my cooktop years ago. A quick purchase from Amazon and a replacement of the regulator, and my cooktop is putting out a higher flame than ever before!
After all the years I spent hating my big gas cooktop, after all the years of feeling cheated into thinking that I purchased a good brand when I hadn't, after all those years of waiting what felt like ages for my soup to boil, I finally discovered the truth. The cooktop works beautifully, the brand was great, and my soup boils ridiculously fast now. It turns out, sometimes the best way to rescue your tragic appliance is to have a trusted plumber fix what the installer messed up. Moral of the story: Never hire an outside contractor to do work in your house when you already have a regular crew, including plumbers, electricians, tile installers (a story for another time), etc that can do the job better. We won't be making that mistake again.
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