I had the spark ignitors replaced a little while back and that helped a little, to lower the simmer, depending on the burner, but still not the best. Especially when simmering with the lid on. Full boil. The simmer issue came roaring back when I had to cook for the Jewish holidays and things that used to just simmer fine, with the lid, on my old cheap GE stove was a rolling boil on simmer. Had to sir constantly to avoid burning the bottom of the pot with meatballs. When simmering the meat for soup it was the same. Issues is also that sometimes the burner will be fine on the low simmer setting and other times I have to adjust since it will go out an click. Its trial and error since you can get a nice low simmer and then you put a pot on top of the burner and then the flame doesn't stay lit. Once day the simmer is fine and the next it clicks. I call it the simmer dance. I'm sure the vent fan and number of burners operating also affects it as well.

So any updates?

Otherwise, I'm increasingly tempted by: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0322481432378.html

I had some issues with simmer on my 48" Culinarian and the appliance service guy (George from Vesco) checked it and it showed low gas pressure when other burners (or the oven I assume) were on high. He suggested I talk with the gas company and the gas company found 2 issues.

1) I had an improper regulator at my gas meter. The regulator seemed to be a screw up by the original guy that installed my gas service 5 years ago, but I never noticed. It had a high pressure regulator when the gas main in the street was low pressure. This caused OK pressure when things were off, but a drop in pressure when things were on.

2) The other issue was that the standard gas meter is only good for around 300,000 BTUs. The 48" Culinarian uses around 200,000 with everything on, so combined with my gas hot water heating boiler, gas furnace & gas dryer I would be over 400,000 with everything in the house on. They upgraded me to a larger meter.

After the gas company repairs I needed to adjust my air shutters since the flames were lifting and I also readjusted my simmer and I'm a happier camper.

Don
48" Capital Culinarian, 6 burners + grill

I am already beyond those suggestions. I had upgraded the meter at the start of my remodel. Have high pressure so the regulator is fine and the gas Co put it in anyway. They actually had to reroute the high pressure vent due to my remodel. I have the Culinarian regulator on the line as well below the rangetop.

Some burners can achieve a lower simmer then other without clicking. But other factors, such as placing the pans on the burner, turning the vent hood on ,etc will cause the burners to start clicking or the flame to go out. So its a dance which then leads to adjusting the low end of the burner higher to avoid it going out. All of this would be avoided by a dedicated simmer burner, in which the supply of gas is stronger/higher with less holes/heat output. Best case would have been a burner design that had dual ports and paths that independently lit up the interior of the burner, when on low and when you got to mid way the outer part would flow gas giving you up to the 23K BTU. This is the only way one burner can really do all without dedicated burners.

Still no Capital simmer burner--not a big surprise, but I just had a realization.

It's not that they can't do a simmer burner (it would take a year or two), but they won't.

Why?

If they make a separate simmer burner now it would be admitting that the 23k burner can't, in fact, truly simmer, and that's something that a certain chair would never do.

Smart business. Best for the consumer? Not exactly.

Addendum: Just say he wanted to do the right thing and make a true simmer--it would cost a fortune to retrofit all the Culinarians that are already in people's homes.

Is that ever to happen? Of course not.

This "Capital true simmer" topic is like flogging the horse post mortem.

There's plenty of doubt that it truly simmers, yet no doubt, in my opinion, that any proper fix, or even admitting there's an issue, is going to happen.

Eh?

Never a post on any topic, anywhere on Gardenweb, except to slam Capital. It's all about your commission.

Spammer. Go away.

Lighten up, I jest, man, I jest.

On a serious note: don't confuse my dislike, distrust of Capital with personal, capital gain, as I could assure you, there is none. As I've stated, I was in the commercial cooking industry at GCI for years but have long since left that lowly racket.