Commercial range in residence, and other appliances

[Renata]

Tile breaks or breaks things (whent you drop things on it). Grout gets dirty. Perhaps consider wood floors.

Renata

--snip--

[Michael L]

Energy recovery is super efficient in a residence. We have baseboard heat (some hot water and some electric). The use of the energy recovery unit saved us money (about $50 a month), and had the effect of reducing a sometimes noticeable musty odor in one part of the house. We looked a any number of products from Lifebreath, Renewair, and Venmar (if I have the names right - please excuse me if they are not spelled correctly). We ended up purchasing/installing a new type of energy recovery product. It works with moisture and heat. It is core made of some type of space-age plastic. The unit is a Conserv and it is made by a company in Florida (near where our home is located) called Dais. One thing we noticed right away once the unit was installed (cost us $1,412 for the total installation by a licensed HVAC contractor) my daughter's sneezing (she has all forms of allergies) just about stopped. Pretty cool stuff - anyone with a few extra dollars - I would recommend you install energy recovery. I do not know fully how it works but it sure does well by us.

[v]

We have a reddish quarry tile with black grout. It seems to be the same tile that is in some of the restaurants. For home use, the embedded abrasive grit anti-slip feature was a challenge; with the lower residential traffic levels, it took years to wear down to a comfortable level, that also did not tear up residential mops. For the first couple of years, I was the only one in the family that was comfortable going barefoot on the kitchen floor.

Whoever said to use a wood kitchen floor for cleanliness is wrong; commercial kitchens, dairies, all types of food service areas, are built with tiled floors for durability and cleanliness (you might see wood in a restaurant kitchen if the building had been converted from another use, though I'd be surprised if modern health inspectors allowed this). In a residence, a wood floor is legal and can be serviceable, though probably need a lot of maintenance, but it is for looks not cleanliness.

To answer another post, commercial eq is also supposed to be reliable, ours go about 17 hrs a day 7 days a week and intended to last for a decade or more (sometimes, much more). The openers fire them up, do breakfast, and help with lunch; the midshift cooks lunch, the closers do dinner and break down each unit for daily cleanup. We have also run 24 hour operations. With that kind of beating, sometimes service is needed, but the units should be durable. I think in residential service, the problems would more be from dis-use than wearing out.

BTW, I also spend thousands of dollars per restaurant per month to simultaneausly heat those appliances all day, and aircondition the kitchen. The rooftop exhaust blowers run constantly. (HINT HINT putting the squirrel cage & motor at a remote location makes for a quieter kitchen) When a belt breaks, we know it immediately because the kitchen smokes up (spare belts are kept inside each blower unit). This is the kind of service a restaurant appliance is built for. I personally do not see the point for a house.

IMHO, for about 99.9% of residential applications, a "near-commercial" stove would be a better choice to sufficiently impress their friends and fulfill the owner's actual service needs, but this is a free country.

-v.