Gas cooktop - Where's the heat?

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

I just moved into my new house and one of the things I've been excited about is using my new gas cooktop. I've got a Whirlpool wcg55u56hs if it makes a difference. I seem to always need to have the burner cranked up as high as it will go to get the same heat as about medium on my old electric stove. I timed boiling a pot of water on the "Speed Heat" burner and it took 15 min to boil about 3/4 of a 5QT pot. That seems very lacking. I feel like the burner was appropriately sized for the pot. Is there something wrong or am I expecting too much?

I'm not real happy with it at the moment.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

I have no idea but I am following this! We are redoing our kitchen this summer and both the wife and I are excited to make a move towards gas.

 

[ArlyA]

Looks like your highest output burner is "Highest Burner Output: 15000 BTU". This will be lower than many electric cook-tops with be.

 

[D&D]

I'm not real happy with it at the moment.

Good question, I have a Bosch lp stovetop and love it. Never timed a pot of boiling water though.
Looked up the model number and it says “sealed burners”. Is there maybe something that can be/should be removed? No manual available for that model so I couldn’t check.
The btu rating of each burner gives a little indication of how it should perform. Centering the pot over the heat makes a difference too. The type of pot alum/stainless/cast matters for time. A comparison test; if you have a gas grill with side burner use the same pot and amount of water. How long?
(NG burns a little hotter than LPG)

 

[CH4Ohio]

You want the flames to hit the BOTTOM of the pot and not run up the sides of the pot. If you have the heat under the pot, I would expect it to heat as well as the electric stove you're used to.

I almost never have my gas cooktop burners on HIGH. Simply too hot for anything except trying to boil water and then, in most pots, the flame pattern would just be too wide for the bottom of the pot.

If you're on Natural Gas but the cooktop was converted to propane, that would result in low burner output. However, that would be very rare. Sometimes this happens when a house is using propane and then natural gas becomes available later. However, this could only happen if someone failed to convert the cooktop and that seems unlikely.

Are you on natural gas? If so, put a big pot of water on the stove and turn a burner up on high. Go outside and watch the test hand on the gas meter and time how long it takes it to make a couple revolutions. Multiply that out to determine how many cubic feet per hour that burner is using. (One cubic foot = 1000 BTUs) You can do this for every burner. Just be sure other appliances aren't running at the same time. This is the easiest way to determine if you're getting the proper output from your cooktop. (Example -- if you have a 1/2 cubic foot test hand, and it takes 2 minutes to make one revolution, that's 1 cubic ft every 4 minutes or 15 cu. ft. every 60 minutes = 15,000 BTU per hour.)

The exact delivery pressure setting will affect the burner output, but clocking the meter as described above should let you determine if you're close to the design output.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

I've got propane and it's been converted to propane. The flame looks nice and blue.

 

[MossRoad]

I just moved into my new house and one of the things I've been excited about is using my new gas cooktop. I've got a Whirlpool wcg55u56hs if it makes a difference. I seem to always need to have the burner cranked up as high as it will go to get the same heat as about medium on my old electric stove. I timed boiling a pot of water on the "Speed Heat" burner and it took 15 min to boil about 3/4 of a 5QT pot. That seems very lacking. I feel like the burner was appropriately sized for the pot. Is there something wrong or am I expecting too much?

I'm not real happy with it at the moment.

Are you using the right, front burner, and are you putting a lid on the pot?

https://www.whirlpool.com/content/dam/global/documents/202003/specification-sheet-wcg55us6hspecsheetv01.pdf

 

[CH4Ohio]

I've got propane and it's been converted to propane. The flame looks nice and blue.

OK. Well that scratches the gas meter idea . . .

 

[ning]

15 minutes is way too long.
Our old 1951 O'Keefe & Merrit stove will boil a large canning pot way before then.

Can you post a pic of the flame under the pot?

 

[CH4Ohio]

As long as we're exploring here . . .

Is it a new house? Are you sure that the appliance regulator was converted to propane in addition to the burner orifices being changed? If not, the appliance regulator set pressure would be way too low.


Edit . . .

Sorry. I see above where you say it is a new house. Good.

So let's be sure the regulator was converted. Who converted the cooktop? Can you verify that the regulator was converted?

The last one that I installed had PLENTY of flame -- actually too high to use on the HIGH setting for anything except a really wide stockpot boiling water. I had to adjust all the LOW settings to get them down to something that would allow a simmer -- they were all set way too high from the factory.