It’s all Blizz’s fault…
Back on page 10 Blizz pointed out that Lowes has 20” gas ranges for about $350. I was poking around Fry’s the other day and found a similar unit from Amana, model number AGG222VDW0, for just shy of $400. It was obviously better made than the RV specific unit I already bought and cheaper too. After a week of hemming and hawing I decided that I haven’t spent enough money on this project and bought it.
One of the advantages of buying locally Is that they delivered it direct to my house on a Saturday morning. Picking it up myself wasn’t an option and delivery cost $25 though.
My first impression was that some engineer spent some serious time on a shaker table figuring out how to ship this thing without damage. They did a really impressive job with custom engineered cardboard stiffeners, pads in the doors, and a full hermetic plastic wrap.
Overall, it is an inexpensive range. Compared to the various middle and high end ranges you can find in your local home improvement store it is definitely near the bottom of the line, intended for a small apartment or similar low cost application. It is still a cut above the RV style range I bought though. I don’t say that based on extensive testing or anything, mostly just based on first impressions. The burners are cast aluminum with a cast iron top cap instead of stamped aluminum. The gas valve knobs have a more solid feel, don’t wobble around when you turn them, and don’t hang up when you try to press and turn them. It includes various features that you would “assume” as a minimum for a home unit, like electronic ignition, a window in the oven door, an inside oven light, and a generally better fit and finish.
I like the fact that it is a free standing range. It will simply fit into a gap in the counter top, and if I ever need to buy another one they are widely available in the 20” size so it will just drop right in. I will be able to fasten it securely to the floor and then not worry about custom fitting the counter around it.
It has a broiler below the oven, that I will probably never use, so that might be considered a waste of space. I might be able to store pots and pans in there, as long as they are only metal, but I probably won’t.
It’s not all good though. They included instructions for converting it to propane (which is good) and they intended to give me the replacement jets to make it happen, but instead of the 4 burner jets I needed they gave me 3 and one of those was the wrong size. Fortunately I was able to fill two of the larger jets intended for natural gas with solder and then drill them out to the correct size. I shouldn’t have to mess with this stuff, and I assume they would have given me the correct jets if I had asked, but I have no time to deal with customer service, not when I can just fix it myself. Other than that, the conversion to propane was simple enough There is one somewhat special tool required to convert the regulator, but I was able to get it done with the end of a file that happened to be about the right size.
They provide a nice anti-tip bracket that is bolted to the floor and is supposed to capture the rear feet when it is slid into place. The problem is, they were supposed to give me two of them, one each for the two back feet, but they only gave me one. What I really need is 4, one for each leg, so I will have to poke around on line and see what I can find. As a manufacturing guy it is disappointing when they build an entire product, and get it pretty much right, and then mess up with the simple stuff, like forgetting the accessories.
I plugged the range into 120V AC and hooked it up to a propane tank to test it. It works exactly as you might expect. I found the flame adjustment on the knobs to be very non-linear. The flame is low for most of the knobs travel and then goes from low to full on in the last 1/8th of a turn. It’s not impossible to get a middle setting, but it takes more attention than it should. Also, part of the conversion to propane involves adjusting the lowest level flame on the burners. I ended up fully closing the adjustment screws to get the lowest possible setting, which was pretty much good enough, but it is worrisome to be at the end of adjustment range.
The oven uses an electric glow igniter which draws about 3.07A at 120V AC. That might not sound like much but it is 368W which is a lot. Fortunately it is only on when the oven flame is on, so it probably would not be on for more than about 10 minutes total while baking for over ½ hour, but It’s still a lot of wasted energy. I understand that it’s a safety consideration. They want to make darned sure that the oven doesn’t release propane without ignition. A more expensive solution would have been to use a spark igniter with a feedback loop to turn the gas off if it doesn’t light right away. In a home application the electricity used would be pretty trivial, but in an RV it is something to consider. This is one area where the RV specific range has an advantage.
The 4 burner stove top uses a trivial amount of 120V AC for the spark ignition, but the burners can also be manually lighted if there is no electricity available. The RV style range uses a piezo-electric spark generator that works from the mechanical twisting of a knob. My experience with those mechanical spark systems on BBQ’s is that they die rather quickly. I consider the lighting of the stove top mostly a triviality as I lived with a manual lighted stove for many years and never felt like I was missing anything.
My only other concern is that the 2 burner grates just sit there (2 grates over 4 burners). They are not held down or otherwise prevented from rattling around. The RV style range has silicone rubber grommets to hold the single piece grate. This is less of an issue for me than it would be for most RV applications since I can’t hear what’s going on in the back of the truck when I am driving up front. On the other hand I don’t want the grates bouncing around, chipping up the stove, or landing on the floor. I think it will be simple enough to place a bead of silicone under and around the grates to lightly wedge them in. I can use my standard trick with plastic wrap as a release barrier to avoid gluing them down permanently.
If anyone wants a brand new, never been used, RV style drop in range, I know where one is available really cheap…
To be continued…
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