Pro-Style Ranges and Kitchen Heat: What to Know Before Upgrading

Thinking about bringing restaurant power into your home kitchen?

Pro-style ranges are beautiful. They provide a steakhouse-quality sear and boil water faster than you can chop carrots. They make any kitchen the heart of the home. Here's why home cooks love them:

• More burner power

• Better heat control

Here's the problem:

All of that energy has to go somewhere.  Most ends up in your kitchen... and on your power bill.

A bigger range means a bigger heat problem.

In this article, you will learn how much heat these ranges produce, why even high-quality A/C for extreme heat can't keep up and what to consider prior to upgrading.

Time to jump in!

What's cooking in this guide:

• How Much Heat Does A Pro Range Really Make?

• Why Kitchen Heat Becomes An AC Problem

• Ventilation: The Part Most People Get Wrong

• 5x Ways To Keep Your Kitchen Cool

How Much Heat Does A Pro Range Really Make?

BTUs stand for British Thermal Units. Gas burners output heat in BTUs. The higher the BTUs, the hotter your flame will be.

Simple.

Pro-style models are on another level compared to a standard range. Some range burners can go up to 25,000 BTUs, while most residential burners are less than 10,000 BTUs.

Now multiply that across 6x burners.

It's not uncommon for a 36" pro range to produce 100,000+ BTUs per hour with all burners lit. Throw in the oven and a griddle, and you're increasing that number even more.

Here's the thing...

The average 3-ton central air unit can extract only 36,000 BTUs per hour. That's a huge deficit.

Why Kitchen Heat Becomes An AC Problem

Right now, your cooling system is fighting a battle you don't even know about. Every time you sear a steak on those burners, you're pumping heat directly into your kitchen—and into the room. Your thermostat senses that heat and makes your AC run longer to compensate. On a mild summer day, that's not a big deal. But on a hundred-five-degree afternoon when your system is already running full tilt? That's where AC for extreme heat makes the difference. If you live in a warm climate, schedule HVAC services before the new range is installed. You'll want a pro to verify that your air conditioner has sufficient cooling capacity to overcome the additional heat the kitchen will produce on those super-hot summer days.

Pretty important, right?

Almost every home is already cooled. Nearly 9 out of 10 US homes have some type of air conditioning. AC accounts for about 19% of electricity used in American homes.

But having AC and having enough AC are two very different things.

An undersized or aging unit just can't keep up with removing the additional heat quickly enough. The kitchen heats up first... and then the rest of the house becomes an oven. Your system runs constantly, your bill skyrockets, and no one is comfortable around the dinner table.

Tip: Open-concept homes are where this applies most. You have no walls to contain the heat. If your kitchen is hot, your living room will be too.

Ventilation: The Part Most People Get Wrong.

Keep cool while cooking with a range hood. It sucks up the hot air, smoke, and grease before it heats up the rest of your home.

Most people choose a hood based on looks.

Big mistake.

Your hood must be sized properly for the output of your range. A good rule of thumb is 100 CFM per 10,000 BTUs of total burner output. CFM measures cubic feet per minute of air moved by the hood.

A cooking range that produces 90,000 BTUs total will require a hood that vents at least 900 CFM.

But there's a catch nobody talks about...

Make-Up Air

As your hood exhausts air from your house, it needs to be replaced by what is known as make-up air. Quite often, municipalities will require a make- up air system when a hood exceeds 400 CFM.

If you don't have it, your hood pulls air into your house through cracks under doors and spaces around windows. When it's hot outside, that means outdoor air. Even worse, your hood can pull that cool air your AC just spent money on OUT of your house!

You end up paying to cool the same air twice.

5x Ways To Keep Your Kitchen Cool

The best news? You don't have to sacrifice range or style. Select which tips work best for your kitchen and implement before installation day arrives.

Size The Hood Properly

Add the BTUs of each burner on your new range together and divide by 100. This is your minimum CFM requirement. If you plan on cooking at high heat most of the time, bump it up a bit. It's far easier to turn down an aggressive hood than to make an inadequate hood work overtime.

Plan For Make-Up Air Early

Make-up air costs much less to add when remodeling than after everything is closed up. Ask your contractor about this early in the design process. They can even temper the incoming air so it won't be hot.

Add Zoned Cooling To The Kitchen

Add another ductless mini-split in the kitchen for supplemental cooling where it's generated. Because it's zoned separately, you can blast the kitchen with cold air without freezing everyone else out of the bedrooms.

Run The Hood Every Single Time

This sounds like common sense.... but people forget. Turn your hood on a few minutes before cooking AND let it run for 10-15 minutes after you finish.  It clears out all the residual heat left in the pans and on the body of the range.

Cook Smarter On Hot Days

Save large stove-top frying or oven-roasting sessions for the morning or evening when it’s cooler. Heat accumulates more quickly in the afternoon, right when your AC is doing it’s hardest work beating the sun.

Is A Pro-Style Range Still Worth It?

Absolutely.

Installing a pro-style range is possibly the best thing a serious home cook can do. The power, the control, and appearance are unparalleled. It just has to be planned right for the hot climate.

Think of it like this:

Range is just one component. Hood, makeup air, and your cooling system are the other important components. Balance all of these, and you will have a kitchen that not only cooks like a restaurant, but is comfortable to be in even during the hottest summer days.

Before You Light That First Burner

The beauty of a pro-style range is that it packs serious firepower into your home kitchen.  The downside is that firepower generates serious heat and your air conditioner must handle all of it.  Time to review:

• Check the total BTU output of the range you want

• Match your hood size to that number

• Plan for make-up air before the walls go up

• Make sure your AC can keep up on the hottest days

• Cook smart when temperatures peak

Do the planning first... then enjoy the steakhouse sear without the sauna.