If you limit your selection of automobiles to those that can accelerate from 0 to 100 mph in under ten seconds, you will be left with a short list of automobiles, most of which are probably well above the average in quality and features. However, the best automobile for your purposes -- one that will serve your needs better if, for instance, good fuel economy is important to you -- may well be excluded by the limitation of 0-100 under ten. A Toyota Prius would not make the list, for instance. The same considerations apply to toilets capable of flushing in one flush two or three times the quantity of standard 4"x3/4" stuffed plastic tube equivalents to the 250 grams or so that most humans produce in one movement. Below, I give a link to a thread on Terry Love's toilet forum that explains the (surprisingly common) problem of long, hard stools experienced by people with spinal cord injuries or Parkinson's disease. If you read through the thread, you will learn that the only toilets likely to solve the problem are the Caromas with a 4" trapway (Caromas use wash-down technology and also have less sharp bends in the pipe than most). But, as my friends who have Caromas will attest, the Caromas have small water spots, which means, without putting too fine a point on it, that there is more of an air pollution problem around a Caroma toilet than around most other toilets. So the Caroma is not the universal answer to every person's dream, either. In short, the MaP is one test, a good objective test, of one aspect -- for many people, perhaps the most important aspect -- of toilet performance. (Just as a 0 to 100 mph test is an objective test of one aspect of an automobile's performance.) But, even then, MaP does not give the definitive answer for which toilet necessarily flushes better than another for the needs, for instance, of a person with a spinal cord injury or Parkinson's disease, conditions that cause the solids to be flushed to differ markedly from the standard plastic bags of miso used for the MaP test. And it does not address the aesthetic of bowl marking that some so-called "Class 6" toilets exhibit, or the question whether the homeowner wants a toilet with a small water spot and consequent big smell -- or a pressurized toilet with a high MaP score but a very loud whoosh -- in a guest bathroom close to the dining room where guests will be seated for dinner. Here is a link that might be useful: One case where MaP fails to give guidance

>>> but after the salesman explained how hot the oven doors get and how much extra heat they give off to the room, I took Bluestar off my list. (I have relatively young children, I live in an area with hot summers, and I don't have air-conditioning in my kitchen. * * * So...thoughts on whether it would make sense for me to spend several thousand dollars more for a DCS or a Wolf vs. a standard Frigidaire or equivalent?There are no simple answers to that last question, as Geoffrey_B has pointed out. But, let me offer a few additional considerations. Apart from being marketed as premium-priced, aesthetically fashionable luxury goods, pro-style gas ranges have multiple full-range burners that can go from highest usable heat to the barest simmer. Do you have times where, like gk7 described above, you will need several high-power burners at once? Or, like me, does your production cooking find you often running four (or more) large pans at high heat at a time. Pro-style ranges like the Wolf and DCS have cooktops that are spacious enough to fit all four large pans on at one time, a convenience that is handy for me with all the entertaining I do. While we all know cooking for five can be serious production-style cooking, how often will you be simultaneously running four (or more) 12" diameter pots and pans? Or, will it be a mix of pans and sauce pans which will fit together readily on the stovetops of the Frigidaires and GEs? Going with a 36" DCS or Wolf will increase the stovetop spaciousness, and that is an oft-discussed reason that folks here have cited as a benefit of the larger ranges. Practically speaking, If you really want that spaciousness, you have to buy a 36" pro-style range and you pay a premium for that. Only you can decide if that extra spaciousness is worth it to you to pay the serious price premium. For griddles, consider that the built-in ones for the Wolf (and probably the DCS) have only a 10 or 11 inches wide cooking surface. IIRC, there have been posts here stating that some find these griddles can be a pain to clean and maintain. For around $100, you can get a significantly larger and generally well-regarded Chef-King 14x23 carbon steel griddle that likely will heat as evenly, be easier to manage and clean, and can be stashed out of the way when you do not need to use it. You can use it as readily on a 30" range, too. The larger burners on the DCS and Wolf can make it bit easier to get even heating on that kind of griddle -- major brand stoves will likely have burners of differing sizes (and a small one in the back) which makes it harder to manage a large griddle. As for not wanting to fire up a big oven for a single lasagna --- and for limiting summer time heat build-up, as well --- you might consider a countertop oven like the Breville Smart Oven. (There are BSO threads here and at Chowhound.com that discuss these benefits in detail if you haven't already looked at this option.) One advantage of the large ovens in 36" ranges is being able to fit in full size sheet pans. Several 30" pro-style ranges (such as Blue Star) also may allow this, but you've already ruled them out. The question is, how many full-size sheet cakes do you plan on making? Or, do you think you might be regularly needing to bake three full-size sheet pans of biscuits at a time? (I know somebody who does that several times a week, but they're running a dude ranch.) You mentioned making a lot of muffins. How many muffin tins do you have? I once helped a friend whose own oven died right before she was ready to bake a lot of muffins for a bake sale. Between us, we came up with six muffin tins. I found that I could put pairs of them side-by-side on three racks in the oven in my 30" range. The oven in a 36" range is a few inches wider, but not wide enough to add another muffin tin to each rack. So, "muffin" production is probably not going to be factor for you in choosing between a 30" and 36" range. But, speaking of oven size, do be aware that some major brand 30" gas ranges will have deeper and wider ovens than on the 30" DCS and Wolf ranges you are considering. The ovens on the Wolf and DCS are rated to have capacities around 4.5 cu ft., as do those on numbers of major brand stoves including the higher priced ones. Plenty big enough for a 25 pound turkey at Thanksgiving along with a casserole or baking pans. However, some of the mid-level and higher-priced major brand gas-ranges have oven cavities that are a couple inches taller and deeper giving them capacities of 5 cu. ft and 6 cu. ft. More stuff at Thanksgiving and such times. Some are big enough that you can put half-sheet pans or cookie sheets in side-by-side and have 4 or 6 pans baking at one time. This extra capacity will matter to some folks and not others, and that will affect the calculus of whether a pro-style range will be worth it to you. Looking at your points about small children, hot summers and no a/c in the kitchen, I have to say that the ovens in virtually every all-gas range that I know of can make a kitchen uncomfortably hot in the summertime. It is not so much heat radiating from the door and sides --- some of which you get with electric ovens, too, btw --- the heat that comes from having to vent combustion by-products. The vents are on top of the stove. That can venting can heat your kitchen and it won't be radiating from the doors and sides. As true of major-brand ranges as well as the pro-style models. It is the nature of having fire in the kitchen. I'll defer to nycbluedevil on the Blue Star door issue, but note that some folks have posted complaints about some older versions of the BS ranges (from before 2012, IIRC) having door heat problems. So, even if BS has solved the problem, the salesguy might simply be parroting old info. Or the appliance store may have recent experience. One thing to be aware of with pro-style gas ranges like the DCS and Wolf is that the spaces between the top and bottom of the oven doors and the top and bottom of the framing are larger than on major-brand gas ranges. This gap allows venting to cool the oven doors. (Major brand ranges have narrower gaps because they different arrangement of the vent slots.) If your young children are still crawling on the kitchen floor or have compulsions to poke the fingers into any visible gaps, the heat of the back of the spaces could be a concern. Also, the top burners on gas ranges will have significant waste heat from the stovetop burners -- again, that's just the nature of cooking with fire in a kitchen and will be as much of a problem with major-brand ranges as the pro-style ones. Theoretically, it could be a bigger problem with the pro-style units because somebody could decide to run three huge fry pans and three huge pasta kettles simultaneously at maximum heat and the pro-style ranges have more big burners than standard ranges. But other than those mad-chef scenarios, the problem isn't particularly different for the pro-style all-gas ranges and the major-brand all-gas ranges. One point to consider, though, is that the pro-style ranges heavy-duty cast-iron burner grates and parts absorb and radiate more heat (and radiate it longer) than the thinner grates on most major brand ranges. (With some major-brand range models, such as the GE Cafe stoves, the grates are substantial enough to be indistinguishable in heat retention.) With those heat concerns, I have to ask if your kitchen has 240v service and, ifso, whether you have considered induction ranges as an alternative? Several of them have good sized ovens with strong convection capabilities and might serve you as well or better than the gas ranges your are considering. Plenty of power on the stovetops, too, and comparatively safer for small children in the kitchen. Also, several of them will allow you to use a large griddle that spans a couple of burners. A couple of the current induction ranges even provide a way to link two burners to do this. Finally, valid and informative statistics on appliance longevity is difficult to come by. A few years ago, the National Association of Homebuilders surveyed consumers on the longevity of ranges. They found the average was something like 13.5 years for electric ranges and 15 years for gas ranges. However, that turned out to be as much about how long people kept their ranges as how long the ranges actually lasted. To put it another way, it can be hard to find a solidly-built major-brand gas range without electronic controllers and many of them also have self-cleaning ovens. Those controllers can and do affect the longevity of major brand ranges, and some of them will fail as a result of heat from the self-cleaning cycles. Finding a very capable, heavy-duty gas range with minimal electronics is pretty hard until you get to ranges like the Wolf and DCS all-gas ranges. They are manual oven cleaning rigged with minimal electronics. Those that they have are modules and that are relatively simple, readily available, and replaceable by any reasonably handy homeowners. These are things like the spark modules that run the burner ignitors. That simplicity fixability does have an appeal and can contribute to perceived longevity. Also, the Wolf and DCS have heavy duty cast-brass burner components. They are much more stain-resistant than the cast aluminum and porcelain-enameled burners you find on most major brand ranges. Ultimately, though, every range represents a mix of choices and tradeoffs. The hard part is figuring out what those are and which ones matter to you. This post was edited by JWVideo on Fri, Oct 24, 14 at 18:43

You are such a clone to my favorite brother in law AND my father. I was raised in VWs. Old school. My dad was an obsessed mechanic who had a love of German made vehicles. He adjusted the valves on our VWs (there were two, a 62 beetle and a 64 bus) constantly. I assert that he may have been the only early VW owner who never sucked a valve. He seriously understood the early motors. My Dad insulated the crap out of our VWs (foam rubber insulation inside, coated with *something* not flammable). He installed more and needed gauges that spoke to him, whatever they said. Protection that gave way with the noise reduction. He demanded both. I spent many a night in that 1964 VW bus that was burgundy and white. Daddy had a traveling gene and a love of road maps that avoided regular routes. We almost pushed the Bus up Pike's Peak and always slept in it, (he made a homemade bed in the back of a removed seat, out of wood and foam padding. Kids slept on the two remaining seats, smallest kid straddled the front gear shift.)We often slept on the side of the road. (Hated it when we ended up near railroad tracks.) In my family, God help you if you had to turn over at night. Daddy liked his sleep and was easily disturbed. No making the car shake by turning positions and he always knew. Little biting bugs in Kansas came right through the vents. Uh ugh. We started to notice the bites almost immediately. Then there was no relief at all. I was raised with German motors. My dad and now my BIL. Been there and done that.

I, too, live in a ruralish area with no street lights. The road to my neighborhood is a long, dark, hilly and winding road. I have to use my high beams to light the sides of the road because that's where deer lurk. My last car had Xenon headlights and they were amazing at providing wonderful light. My present car had the option of Xenon or Halogen and I just couldn't take a chance that the Halogen would be less effective, so I chose the model with Xenon, because I knew they worked for me. Both models, former BMW, present Audi, have some kind of feature that adjusts the headlights when a car is approaching so they are not blinded. That feature doesn't work with the high beams but the very bright low beams. I really hate all the big suv's and trucks that people seem to feel they need to drive these days because if you're in a normal size car, their headlights are right at eye level as they approach you. It's awful sometimes.