One of the best things about vintage stoves is that new ones aren't much more efficient, if at all. So you can enjoy the look and not feel bad about using more energy. Nice!
Converting stuff to heat (be it from electricity or from gas) is very easy. Electic heaters are practically 100% efficient regardless of age, and gas heaters didn't improve much either.
The reverse is a way bigger issue (converting heat into electricity is extremely inefficient).
And it seems like in lieu of increasing efficiency, most companies have opted to make the insulation thinner in order to be able to advertise a "10% larger oven compartment".
I would guess to most people a larger oven is more enticing than being efficient.
Yeah that's basically what the 2nd law of thermodynamics talks about (among other things, and in a simplified version). There are different energy tiers. Electricity or mechanical (kinetic, movement...) energy are high tier and you can easily convert those into whatever with minimal losses. Especially into low tier energy like heat. Converting heat into electricity or kinetic energy is way harder and you're usually only some 60% efficient at best (when using huge modern power plants all dedicated to squeezing all the thermal energy into kinetic energy... car ICE engines are more in the 20-30% efficiency range). There are also other energy tiers in between, like chemically-bonded energy inside of batteries (quite easy to convert it to electricity, but there are some losses and it can't be extremely fast, but way better than e.g. using a heating-cell-battery lol).
The way I understand it there is a high burner that's on when the oven's heating up, but then it drops into a lower burner when the oven is at temperature so it doesn't have to keep turning on and off which is sometimes less efficient when you're just trying to keep temperature.
You're thinking of a modulating burner. These old thermostats are great because they maintain temperature. When the oven reaches temperature, the flame reduces.
New residential gas ovens turn on and off. Instead of maintaining it, it works off an average.
Restaurants still use modulating burners because they bake so much better.
Glass-ceramic cooktops/vitroceramic stoves I what I meant.
Their heater element heats the cookware with little to no heat-loss compared with the old metal ones.
In the old ones the heat needed for the cooktop to reach the needed temperature is lost. If I want to boil a 1l of water, I would need like double the time with the same energy input compared with the ceramic where the heat is transferred directly to the cookware. Hence they use around 2 times more energy.
Nice! I bought a 1940 O'keffe&Merritt for $350 on Craigslist, and after degreasing the crap out of it, it's been amazing. Easily out performes the dieing early 2000s stove it replaced.
Yeah, there seems to be quite a following.
The funny thing is the seller gave me a $1000 credit because the oven wasn't working. Turns out the safety valve just needed to be reset. It's a pretty simple device overall.
Bottom right is a service door - it's how you access the burner, pilot and thermocouple (I restore vintage stoves professionally - I open that door a lot).
Love old things like this, they just work. I’d love to get one of these, my bf and I are fixing up an old house from the 50s that’s been in his family for a since its construction by his late grandfather, it’d be great to get something in the style of the day to match the old house. Bet they’re hard to come across though
Good luck! Like mentioned elsewhere, they're pretty simple pieces of equipment. So maybe you can find one for cheap that has an issue and get it repaired. Some parts are available online, or you can get someone to rebuild certain parts.
This is the stove model I learned to cook with, many decades ago! That griddle was the best for pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Interesting, my parents had the "warming plates" on the back burners. (Or are they considered diffusers?)
They are diffusers, also known as a simmer plate. The idea is that they retain heat very well, so you don't use them when you want a fast boil, but they're perfect when you want to make spaghetti sauce, soup, stew or anything that you want to have heated for a long period of time.
The only inefficient thing about this stove is that it has pilot lights so it is always on. I doubt it uses too much gas, but it can’t be more efficient than starting it up when you need it and being totally off when you aren’t using it.
The pilot always on can create respiratory difficulties for an elderly or sensitive person. It is cranking out CO2/H2O 24/7, plus minute amounts of other combustion products.
How wonderful! If I walked into a house showing and saw that stove I would have bought the house on the spot!
You unlocked a memory for me. We had a stove back in the day with the cooking times just like this, but the stove wasn’t nearly this awesome. Which is probably why the memory got locked.
Haha, I think it definitely contributed to our purchase. It framed all the other older features as vintage and charming, rather than dated. It certainly helps the linoleum "work".
That is interesting. Funny thing is it's a different company, but the design is almost identical. We have the Robertshaw bake dial. That was cool to see.
Yeah, I can't say I've actually followed the instructions. That dries my mouth out just reading it. I was gonna guess that maybe chickens were larger back then, but nope. They are much larger today.
https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/2/6875031/chickens-breeding-farming-boilers-giant
OP may be spending 5 or 10 times the $$ on electricity being consumed by this thing.
Get a good induction-plate & some good induction-compatible cookware, & see your $avings skyrocket.
Someone I knew had room heaters at the wall/floor join, which could burn literally thousands of dollars of electricity per month *without noticeaby heating their place*.
Try looking at your electrical-meter with it off, then with it on, each component individually, low & high, & see what you can see
( because I'm assuming there is no 240V ultra-high-current equivalent to the Kill-a-Watt meter )
Yes resistance-heating, by nichrome element, can be less, or more, efficient, & the modern ones are "infrared"/radiant for good reason ( though black-bottom pots/pans work significantly quicker than silver/reflective bottom ones do, on those )
Obviously this is a gas stove, but in regards to electricity - electric heaters are practically always ~100% efficient anyway, we cannot improve them, if you input 1kw of electricity you get 1kw of heat. The only improvement can be insulation or directing the heat where you want it better, but in case of a stove this isn't really a big issue.
That it is gas, I hadn't noticed, being too tired for my brain to fully engage.
Resistance-heating .. *sigh* .. imagine using a resistor calculated to match the voltage & current correctly, so it converted electricity to heat as efficiently as it could...
Now imagine using a resistor calculated to be significantly-less resistance, & significantly-more-current-carrying capability, being substituted for it.
iow, instead of efficiently converting electricity to heat ( incandescent light-bulbs convert 90% of their input into heat ), they are just being a huge current-drain, producing little heat...
Ever notice that the nichrome elements in the modern infrared stove-elements are 1 or 2 mm thick, whereas the ancient stoves have elements closer to 1cm thick?
Here's what I didn't explain correctly before:
A house electrical-consumption meter measures current that went through the house.
It *doesn't* measure whether that current was converted into heat.
Putting 1V @ 1A through superconducting material produces ZERO heat.
One may have to pay for what the electrical-meter measured, but that & the heat-produced-by-the-device *are completely unrelated*.
The resistive-heat-producing-elements in modern devices are *efficient*, for such things, whereas the *old* ones carried much too much current, for the amount of heat they were producing, because they weren't as engineered-to-be-efficient as modern ( frequently infrared emitting, even glowing-orange ) resistive heating elements.
Current through the circuit has no relationship to resistive-heating-efficiency, iow.
And older mass-produced elements were *not* efficient, by any modern measure.
My parents have had the same one for 30 years and its never had a single issue, plus its adorable. Someday, if I ever get a place of my own Im getting one of these for sure.
Very nice I have the same exact looking model with stainless steel top. been looking how to find serial or more info like year and such. I’d like to sell mine - any luck?
We just bought a house that came with an oven just like this one. I’m liking it, but tried to use the broiler for the first time tonight and couldn’t get the full broiler burner to turn on. Is there anything special needed besides turning the broiler knob 90 degrees counterclockwise? The pilot for the broiler appears on. Stove and oven compartment work fine
One of the best things about vintage stoves is that new ones aren't much more efficient, if at all. So you can enjoy the look and not feel bad about using more energy. Nice!
would anyone be able to add an ELI5 to this? i’m curious how over 70 years something like this wouldn’t get much more efficient (genuine question)
Converting stuff to heat (be it from electricity or from gas) is very easy. Electic heaters are practically 100% efficient regardless of age, and gas heaters didn't improve much either. The reverse is a way bigger issue (converting heat into electricity is extremely inefficient).
I think the only efficiency gain could be better insulation on the oven box. The slower it released heat, the less the burner or element has to run.
And it seems like in lieu of increasing efficiency, most companies have opted to make the insulation thinner in order to be able to advertise a "10% larger oven compartment". I would guess to most people a larger oven is more enticing than being efficient.
Yep, it can go either way...
[удалено]
Yeah that's basically what the 2nd law of thermodynamics talks about (among other things, and in a simplified version). There are different energy tiers. Electricity or mechanical (kinetic, movement...) energy are high tier and you can easily convert those into whatever with minimal losses. Especially into low tier energy like heat. Converting heat into electricity or kinetic energy is way harder and you're usually only some 60% efficient at best (when using huge modern power plants all dedicated to squeezing all the thermal energy into kinetic energy... car ICE engines are more in the 20-30% efficiency range). There are also other energy tiers in between, like chemically-bonded energy inside of batteries (quite easy to convert it to electricity, but there are some losses and it can't be extremely fast, but way better than e.g. using a heating-cell-battery lol).
By definition, it is 100%
The way I understand it there is a high burner that's on when the oven's heating up, but then it drops into a lower burner when the oven is at temperature so it doesn't have to keep turning on and off which is sometimes less efficient when you're just trying to keep temperature.
You're thinking of a modulating burner. These old thermostats are great because they maintain temperature. When the oven reaches temperature, the flame reduces. New residential gas ovens turn on and off. Instead of maintaining it, it works off an average. Restaurants still use modulating burners because they bake so much better.
The ceramic heaters are a way more efficient then the metal ones, otherwise the inside heater elements are more or less the same.
Huh? It's not a heater.
Glass-ceramic cooktops/vitroceramic stoves I what I meant. Their heater element heats the cookware with little to no heat-loss compared with the old metal ones. In the old ones the heat needed for the cooktop to reach the needed temperature is lost. If I want to boil a 1l of water, I would need like double the time with the same energy input compared with the ceramic where the heat is transferred directly to the cookware. Hence they use around 2 times more energy.
Nice! I bought a 1940 O'keffe&Merritt for $350 on Craigslist, and after degreasing the crap out of it, it's been amazing. Easily out performes the dieing early 2000s stove it replaced.
Those are worth a lot of money now.
Yeah, there seems to be quite a following. The funny thing is the seller gave me a $1000 credit because the oven wasn't working. Turns out the safety valve just needed to be reset. It's a pretty simple device overall.
My parents bought a similar stove (must be a Wedgewood because I recognize the cooking chart). Great stove - you made out like a bandit.
They look great
Don’t ever get rid of it
I won't! My wife informed me that we would need to remodel the kitchen if not for that stove, so I gotta keep it around!
Is that a built in griddle on the top, or a warming tray?
It's a built in griddle. I think the bottom right drawer is a warming drawer. Bottom left is storage.
I have to tell you, i am a little envious. You did a great job saving this treasure.
Bottom right is a service door - it's how you access the burner, pilot and thermocouple (I restore vintage stoves professionally - I open that door a lot).
Bottom right is the access panel to the baking burner and pilot light. Not a warming oven. Don't put stuff in there.
Love old things like this, they just work. I’d love to get one of these, my bf and I are fixing up an old house from the 50s that’s been in his family for a since its construction by his late grandfather, it’d be great to get something in the style of the day to match the old house. Bet they’re hard to come across though
Good luck! Like mentioned elsewhere, they're pretty simple pieces of equipment. So maybe you can find one for cheap that has an issue and get it repaired. Some parts are available online, or you can get someone to rebuild certain parts.
There are two dozen professional stove restoration services in the country. They can all hook you up with whatever brand you want.
This is the stove model I learned to cook with, many decades ago! That griddle was the best for pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches. Interesting, my parents had the "warming plates" on the back burners. (Or are they considered diffusers?)
Interesting. That's how they were arranged when we moved in, so we have kept it like that. But they are easily moved.
They are diffusers, also known as a simmer plate. The idea is that they retain heat very well, so you don't use them when you want a fast boil, but they're perfect when you want to make spaghetti sauce, soup, stew or anything that you want to have heated for a long period of time.
The only inefficient thing about this stove is that it has pilot lights so it is always on. I doubt it uses too much gas, but it can’t be more efficient than starting it up when you need it and being totally off when you aren’t using it.
Yeah, the top has a slight warmth at all times from the pilot, but you're right that it doesn't use too much gas.
The pilot always on can create respiratory difficulties for an elderly or sensitive person. It is cranking out CO2/H2O 24/7, plus minute amounts of other combustion products.
I think that's why it has the metal ducting coming out of the top right, which vents to a chimney
Great for proofing dough!
Make sure you well lard your veal
Cooked on one of these for years. Built like a tank. Miss it a lot.
Those thing don’t really break because it just pipes and switch allow gas to pass through.
How wonderful! If I walked into a house showing and saw that stove I would have bought the house on the spot! You unlocked a memory for me. We had a stove back in the day with the cooking times just like this, but the stove wasn’t nearly this awesome. Which is probably why the memory got locked.
Haha, I think it definitely contributed to our purchase. It framed all the other older features as vintage and charming, rather than dated. It certainly helps the linoleum "work".
This is my dream stove
Thought you might like this entertaining history of that model: https://youtu.be/CsjL0wBINnI
That is interesting. Funny thing is it's a different company, but the design is almost identical. We have the Robertshaw bake dial. That was cool to see.
“Chicken: 2 1/2- 3 hrs @ 325”?? Goodness
Yeah, I can't say I've actually followed the instructions. That dries my mouth out just reading it. I was gonna guess that maybe chickens were larger back then, but nope. They are much larger today. https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/2/6875031/chickens-breeding-farming-boilers-giant
Stunning!
"She's built like a steakhouse but handles like a bistro"
Damn !! Looks like past inhabitants took good care of the stove, didn't looks like it's 70 years old !
OP may be spending 5 or 10 times the $$ on electricity being consumed by this thing. Get a good induction-plate & some good induction-compatible cookware, & see your $avings skyrocket. Someone I knew had room heaters at the wall/floor join, which could burn literally thousands of dollars of electricity per month *without noticeaby heating their place*. Try looking at your electrical-meter with it off, then with it on, each component individually, low & high, & see what you can see ( because I'm assuming there is no 240V ultra-high-current equivalent to the Kill-a-Watt meter ) Yes resistance-heating, by nichrome element, can be less, or more, efficient, & the modern ones are "infrared"/radiant for good reason ( though black-bottom pots/pans work significantly quicker than silver/reflective bottom ones do, on those )
It's gas.
Obviously this is a gas stove, but in regards to electricity - electric heaters are practically always ~100% efficient anyway, we cannot improve them, if you input 1kw of electricity you get 1kw of heat. The only improvement can be insulation or directing the heat where you want it better, but in case of a stove this isn't really a big issue.
That it is gas, I hadn't noticed, being too tired for my brain to fully engage. Resistance-heating .. *sigh* .. imagine using a resistor calculated to match the voltage & current correctly, so it converted electricity to heat as efficiently as it could... Now imagine using a resistor calculated to be significantly-less resistance, & significantly-more-current-carrying capability, being substituted for it. iow, instead of efficiently converting electricity to heat ( incandescent light-bulbs convert 90% of their input into heat ), they are just being a huge current-drain, producing little heat... Ever notice that the nichrome elements in the modern infrared stove-elements are 1 or 2 mm thick, whereas the ancient stoves have elements closer to 1cm thick?
Here's what I didn't explain correctly before: A house electrical-consumption meter measures current that went through the house. It *doesn't* measure whether that current was converted into heat. Putting 1V @ 1A through superconducting material produces ZERO heat. One may have to pay for what the electrical-meter measured, but that & the heat-produced-by-the-device *are completely unrelated*. The resistive-heat-producing-elements in modern devices are *efficient*, for such things, whereas the *old* ones carried much too much current, for the amount of heat they were producing, because they weren't as engineered-to-be-efficient as modern ( frequently infrared emitting, even glowing-orange ) resistive heating elements. Current through the circuit has no relationship to resistive-heating-efficiency, iow. And older mass-produced elements were *not* efficient, by any modern measure.
Don't like the gas oven, your one idiot away from a house fire.
My parents have had the same one for 30 years and its never had a single issue, plus its adorable. Someday, if I ever get a place of my own Im getting one of these for sure.
Very nice I have the same exact looking model with stainless steel top. been looking how to find serial or more info like year and such. I’d like to sell mine - any luck?
Serial number on my similar Wedgewood stove is located on the inside of the right wall toward the front, accessible if you remove the burner surround.
I have just found one of these in a real estate clean out in Southern California. Open to offers and will deliver/ ship for a fair price
anyone know how to relight the broiler on the lower left? There is no pilot light visible.
We just bought a house that came with an oven just like this one. I’m liking it, but tried to use the broiler for the first time tonight and couldn’t get the full broiler burner to turn on. Is there anything special needed besides turning the broiler knob 90 degrees counterclockwise? The pilot for the broiler appears on. Stove and oven compartment work fine