"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message
...
Hmmm, slightly off topic but here we go.


I have just had delivered, and installed, a new Gas Cooker. I am in the
UK.

It seems to me that the cooker is woefully inadequate.
A standard ring with a standard pan that fits the ring, will not make a
pan of chips (french fries).

Similarly, the oven, which has a control up to Gas Mark 8, will not heat
the oven higher than Gas Mark 5, and 45 minutes at Max failed to brown
properly a Poussin for dinner tonight, and the garlic bread was similarly
uncooked, so my breath is going to stink tomorrow.


But the question is, how might you measure the power output of such a
cooker to determine whether there is or isn't a problem with it?
All I know is that according to the Gas Safety Certificate given to me by
the installers, it is rated at 9KWHr.
(It has an oven and grill (mutually exclusive use), 2 standard rings, one
small one and one large one. I haven't a clue what this 9KWHr figure
actually means in practice)


Now, I know there are methods of checking microwave power by boiling a
known quantity of water and timing it, so is there perhaps a similar
method for a gas cooker?
(Obviously more difficult than the Microwave because the efficiency of
heating is going to be vastly different and very subjective).



Cheers,


Gareth.


Thanks for all the suggestions.

OK, I've boiled a litre of water in a 2 litre pan on the large 100mm ring
and it took around 6 - 6.5 minutes, kind of in the same ballpark as Phils
results.

Thing is my probably 20 year old cooker had 4 small rings of the same size,
but they were quite powerful, so my french fries experiment was done on one
of the medium sized rings of the new cooker, and they are not powerful
enough to cook them. So I was comparing Apples and Oranges there.
The 100mm ring probably would do fine with a suitably larger pan, so perhaps
there's nothing wrong up top.

The oven definitely has a problem, and I have noticed the floor pan above
the burner is bent with a damaged philips screw holding it in, so someone
has been messing with it. I will investigate this later.

Phils 250oC in 15 minutes is what I would have expected from my old cooker -
this equates to Gas Mark 8. This one never got above Mark 5 despite 45
minutes on full blast.
I believe the thermostat is reasonably accurate because it tallies with my
common experience of putting a chicken in the oven at Mark 8 and Mark 5.
The results last night were definitely Mark 5.

The cooker did come with an extra set of jets and some kind of choke (?)
coupling for Propane gas - the packet is clearly marked as to what they
are, the fitters pointed them out too, so I don't think the wrong jets are
fitted.


I'll do the Gas meter calculation, probably over the weekend - will again
run the oven on full for an hour and see how much gas it has used, and see
if it has cooked my shoulder of lamb.
I know for a fact it won't do roast potatoes right now. Bummer.


Thanks to all,


Gareth.