"William R. Walsh" m>
wrote:
> What--if anything--am I doing wrong here? Am I expecting too much from
> this
> stove? Do I need to adjust this stove or calibrate it somehow?

Maybe you're just not waiting long enough for it to come to a boil... you're
expecting too much. Gas stoves are notorious for taking a long time to bring
water to a boil compared to electric stoves. Even high powered residential
stoves can take a long time. 15 to 20 to 25 or more minutes is not out of
the ordinary.

The conversion factor for watts to Btus is about 3.4. So a 2,000 watt
electric element would generate 6,400 Btu and a 3,000 watt electric element
would generate 10,200 Btu. But the gas burner is far less efficient in
transfering the heat to the pot compared to an electric element. A lot of
the heat goes up and around the pot with gas compared to electric. My guess
is a 3,000 watt (or 10,200 Btu) electric element would boil water far faster
than a 15,000 Btu gas burner, so great is the difference.

On gas burners being adjusted properly, if the burner is "too lean", with
too much air getting in, they tend to be quite noisy (and maybe hard to
ignite). If the burner is "too rich", the flames are no longer all blue, but
have a lot of yellow or orange in them.

Regarding the age of your stove, I would think it is a lot older than 1998
if it has a mechanical digital clock. That almost sounds like late 1970s
vintage to me. I know I had a new GE electric stove in 1991, and it had a
blue (gas fluorescent?) digital clock. Alarm clocks with physical cards with
the numbers on them that flipped over were popular in the 1970s, so if
that's what this stove has, I'd expect it was from that era.

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