Acting on impulse

With electricity no longer an issue, I turned to our home’s natural gas use. We really had just two appliances still using natural gas: our water heater, and our cooktop. Years ago, we swapped our tank-type water heater out for a tankless one, which uses less gas. While we could swap it for an electric heat pump water heater, doing so would involve some serious remodeling. So that just left the cooktop.

My wife and I have had some experience with induction cooktops, so the idea of switching to one appealed to us. Just as we started giving the idea serious consideration, I caught wind of an induction cooktop from a relatively new company called Impulse Labs. After a bit of research, we took the plunge and preordered one (the company was so new, the cooktops weren’t actually available yet).

Induction cooktops take a lot of energy while operating, and normally require a dedicated 220-volt circuit. While our gas cooktop needed some electricity to ignite the burners, it came from a standard household outlet. Thus, we would have had to pay an electrician to run a new line from our breaker panel. But this is one way that the Impulse Cooktop stands apart: you can either power it from a 220-volt circuit or you can just plug it in to an ordinary 120-volt outlet, as long as that outlet can supply around 12 amps. That’s because the Impulse Cooktop draws its power from a rather hefty internal battery, a battery that is recharged when you aren’t cooking (the battery also allows you to use the cooktop for a couple of hours during power outages).

For us, making the switch turned out to be as easy Impulse says it can be — but that’s because we already had the precise setup for which the Impulse Cooktop was designed. For one thing, we already had a cooktop separate from our oven. Two, ours was a 30-inch cooktop (Impulse currently only makes a 30-inch model, although they are about to introduce a 36-inch version as well). And three, the outlet our gas cooktop was plugged into was on a 15-amp circuit that was only shared with the vent hood. Oh, and we already had induction-ready cookware (most is, these days).

Thanks to that, I did the install myself. In my case, preparing for the new cooktop involved shutting off the gas to the old one (there is a valve right where the gas pipe comes out of the wall; otherwise I would have had to pay a plumber to deal with the gas line), removing the old cooktop, and then carefully capping the gas pipe. Next, I had to eliminate a drawer right below the cooktop, since the Impulse Cooktop hangs down 6 inches or so below the countertop and needs some space around it for air circulation to keep the battery cool. Preparations done, my wife and I assembled the battery to the cooktop (the two pieces come separately) and, with the help of a strong friend (the cooktop and battery together weigh around 150 pounds), we set the Impulse Cooktop into the countertop opening where our gas cooktop had been.

According to Consumer Reports, induction cooktops are “about 10% more efficient than traditional electric cooktops and up to three times more efficient than gas.” So, although I don’t expect huge savings on the gas portion of my PG&E bill — the bulk of our gas use comes from our tankless hot water heater — every bit helps. And, with all the talk these days about the health risks that come from gas stoves, we just may be saving our health as well.

After installing the cooktop and running a software update (it has a large color display) we gave it a trial run by boiling a pot of water — which took less than a minute. Since then, we’ve been experimenting with the various cooking modes. While you can just set a given burner on low, medium, high — or anything in between — like a conventional cooktop, a temperature sensor on each burner lets you set a precise temperature, allowing you do sous-vide-style cooking without any special equipment. We’re still exploring this new way of cooking, and we’re having fun in the process. Now, about that water heater.