Induction hobs
 

Guys
I need to ask a question.

I've purchased an induction hob from Currys, booked installation for it, and a washing machine.
The fitters have said that they are not allowed to fit the hob, because its above a cutlery drawer (which is quite deep I might add) and has already a decent gap to the bottom of the existing ceramic hob.
He said there needs to be a thermal plate between the drawer and the hob.
He did say that they were putting a washing machine into another house yesterday, and the home owner had an electrician there fitting an induction hob above a cutlery drawer and he said it was no problem.

Everything I read online by people posting says they've done it without problem.

So, do any of you have an induction hob above a cutlery drawer?

I'm currently trying to call kitchen fitting companies, but they're all busy.

Seems a bit odd as an induction hob creates the heat by electro magnetically heating the pan, so the hob itself only gets hot as a result of the pan being hot, it doesn't generate any heat itself.

If he means something to stop it somehow heating the cutlery through magnetism, it seems unlikely as they all protection for the electrics of the hob itself, so it certainly isn't going to do anything with your cutlery!

Sounds like the usual calibre of Currys staff.......

A quick search on t'internet shows loads of people happily using them above cutlery drawers without issue!

I know, i've read all that too and its really pissed me off about Currys
I said to him, why didn't they tell me this the fecking shop, he replied by saying they don't have a clue, but company policy is he's not allowed to fit it.

I rang a local kitchen company, they said they've fitted hundreds of the things through the electrician they use.
He said that if there is going to be any heat, it would be from the fans, but he has only every had one issue with heat, and they solved that by putting in a divider.
They put me in contact with their electrician, and he said he would love to know why these can't be fitted above cutlery drawers as he does it all the time.

Induction hobs use electro magnetic induction to transfer the energy to a ferrous material (pan) placed on (or near to) the inductive source - this results in the ferrous material heating up.

The induction is achieved using a coil of wire, which when you pass an electric current through it, generates a magnetic field. You should remember from your high school science classes, magnetic fields try to connect in circles from (north to south). The coil is aligned in the hob, such that the magnetic field travels vertically, so that means it goes both upwards and downwards from the cooking hob. The more current you pass through the coil, the larger and more powerful the the field and the more energy will be transferred as heat into the pan.

This is a more energy efficient way of heating the pan than a conventional heating element which relies on heat conduction which has greater losses. It also has the advantages that you can more quickly regulate the heat (comparable to cooking with gas) and the cooking surface itself (as a non ferrous material) is not heated by induction (although will still be heated from conductive heat transfer from the pan back to the surface!). The big disadvantage is you need ferrous metal pans for it to work, so if you have any copper, aluminium, glass or ceramic pots for example, they're not going to work, although you can get heating plates to put between the hob and the pot, but you loose the efficiency and ability to quickly vary the temperature.

So, if you have ferrous metal objects (e.g. stainless steel cutlery) directly below, they may also be subject to the electromagnetic field and therefore be heated. The big question is the effective field size of the hob and how far below the hob the cutlery is stored. If they are far enough away, they may not be affected or perhaps lightly warmed, but if they're too close, they could of course get extremely hot and cause burning if you touch them, not to mention pose a fire risk. By installing a "thermal plate" as the installer puts it, the idea is to shield or block the magnetic field from propagating below the hob and heating any metal objects below. Some manufacturers may install such shields as standard, others may not and will rely on you having a minimum distance from the bottom of the hob to any ferrous metal objects.

I would recommend you download the manufacturers handbook from the hob you bough and see what their recommendations are! Regardless of the spacing, you can still put non ferrous metals (e.g. silver cutlery) or plastics in the drawer without a problem. You should of course avoid putting your wallet in there though, otherwise you may find you credit cards stop working (tip: put your wifes credit card in there ;))

I tried contacting Samsung - what a waste of 30 mins that was, you get some tool referring you to a manual.
Their recommendation is this, a drawer should not be below the hob.
However, its it perfectly find to have an over below the hob, so long as there is a divider which is 20mm below the hob.
The drawer I have would mean the cutlery probably would be 25-30 mm from the bottom of the hob, but the fella with the name that you can't pronounce, says no in the best pigeon English that he can manage to string together.

"Its is not being recommended to do this"

Wifes credit card - I took that off her ages ago ;)

To be fair to the Currys installation guy, he said the plate is to make sure that I can't touch the bottom of the hob when reaching into the drawer.
To touch the bottom of the existing hob would mean having to twist your arm, so that the palm faces upwards, then you've have to purposely feed your hand into the drawer which would need to be partially opened in order to try to touch it.

So you're being a bit of a tool if you really wanted to do that.

I just measured the cutlery distance.

My estimate was wrong on the distance.
Worst case the cutlery is 60 - 65mm from the bottom of the existing hob, with the compartment with the least amount of things in it being 80-85mm from the bottom

Should probably be fine provided its not stuffed full of all sorts.

Curry's policy is probably based on avoiding any litigation. If they install it, then a customer burns themselves on a super-heated spoon, then Curry's would be liable for damages. As a big company, their lawyers have probably done a risk assessment and introduced the policy, even if its an overkill. A small independent kitchen supplier probably hasn't even thought about it, and having installed hundreds of kitchens and never had a problem, most likely don't understand why Curry's won't do it!

You also have to consider that the average spark is only really trained how to wire stuff up, not on the intricate principles of magnetic induction - Sadly I had to endure 7 years of higher education in power-electronics, so its actual nice to put those long forgotten theories to some use ;)

Having done more reading, it seems that its not just Samsung saying no induction hob over cutlery drawer.
Seems to be a lot of them saying the same things based on other folks postings online

Thanks
I've downloaded the manual from Samsung
http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/co...070K_EU_EN.pdf.

The appliance and its accessible parts become hot during use
Cables from electrical appliances must not touch the hot surface of the hob or cookware.

In fairness it does say drawers may not be fitted underneath on page 16.

Maybe I should just take the entire thing back to the bloody shop.

On the other hand, the Currys guy said just get an electrician to fit it for you, I'm just not allowed to

Exactly, I contacted them to ask why - not a fcuking clue, waste of a 25/30 minute attempt.
Plus, lets face it, there will be no front vent gap, considering this is replacing a broken ceramic hob.
Gonna go see the local kitchen company I spoke with tomorrow I think

I suspect companies won't want to publicise that induction heats ferrous materials both upwards and downwards, this could cause the public to unduely fear the technology as the average person doesn't understand it. Its easiest just to say you need a gap for cooling purposes and leave it at that. What you don't know can't hurt you!

Which make is yours?

Yep. Once rang them to find out if a TV bought in the UK would defo work in France. (I now know it would, but this was fifteen years ago).

Their response was, "We cannot uphold the warranty if you buy in the UK and take the TV to France."

Quite apart from that not even being my question, they refused to deviate from that answer.:cuckoo:

TBH, I no longer buy Samsung because of their cr@p customer service, unless no-one else does the same. I now have a Sony phone and LG TV's.

My thinking is two fold, Samsung say it can't be fitted above the drawer, and secondly if something went faulty with it, I would imagine I would be told it was fitted incorrectly and warranty would be null.
My old Neff ceramic hob was faultless for 8 years, and my other cooking appliances are Neff, plus Neff instructions say it can be installed above the drawer

Yeah, Neff unit ordered first thing this morning, and instructions all checked. Will be here Monday