You may have a defective unit. We have the same portable Burton, and have no problems boiling water in 9" All Clad pots. If anything, we haven't turned it on above 3-4 for anything, especially when we use cast iron Wagners.

I calculate 33 minutes to heat from 60F to about 212F, assuming heating a perfectly insulated container, and assuming that it really was delivering 1600 watts at ~80% coupling efficiency. Obviously your pot is radiating more and more heat as it gets hotter, not perfectly insulated, so it would take longer to boil -- much longer (if ever) if you didn't have a lid on that pot.

I would expect the 3000 watt version to boil the two gallons in a somewhat less than half the time.

By 7" induction disk do you mean the kind of "induction disk" that is a ferrous slug to put between the unit and a copper pan? (I think not, from the rest of your post.) Or is it advertising blather about the inductor? Or is it the nominal size of the element ring?

The voltage and power difference should make a huge difference between the plug in unit and the quasi-professional unit. I have a friend who has a Max Burton, just the regular one, who is thrilled with it.

What is your altitude?

Boost gives you all available power, but it won't increase the power you have. The more power you have the faster your boil time will be.

About two gallons of water, plus vegetables and bits of birds (i.e., stock), on my built-in, at full boosted power, which is around 4400, I think, can take about 20 minutes to a hard boil, if I remember right. Probably uncovered. Not as scientific as Attofarad's calculations.

For a couple of quarts of water in a cast iron sauce pan, covered, on full boost, it's only a few minutes. A couple of pints in the steel kettle is almost instantaneous.

If you don't mind fan noise, and since you're willing to put in the power, you might also look at Cooktek, which are commercial models. Check The Induction Site for them.

The "induction disk" that I mean is the actual induction coil on the inside of the unit. Max Burton uses the same 7" coil on all their units according to the emails I've exchanged with them. They went on to say that all these portable units by any of the manufacturers are 6" - 7" coils.

The pot in question is a thin-walled stainless with the "impact bonded" aluminum sandwich on the bottom. Definitely not perfectly insulated with those thin walls!

Altitude is about 1100 feet.

Thanks for the quick replies!
Jim

Hm... I suppose I meant "elevation". :) Not different enough from happy friend for that to make a difference. I take it they didn't tell you how the size of the inductor affects the pan size and power output?

The pot might be an issue too. I don't know how that kind of pot reacts to induction. Does it take extra time to transfer the heat to the aluminum and then back to the steel lining? Is there enough more aluminum mass than steel mass to slow things down? If you have an enamelled steel, carbon steel, or fully clad stainless, you might get a more definitive result. I have some small carbon steel pans that are very thin. The lack of overall mass speeds up heating and transfers the heat right away (mostly use these for eggy things). My enamelled cast iron is massy and takes awhile to heat up, but hold heat beautifully. The enamelled steel heats more slowly than the plain carbon steel, but it's still pretty fast. The 7-ply clad stainless/aluminum/copper, which is designed to work well on induction (Demeyere), is also massy and heats a little faster than the cast iron, but not much.

When I do the "amaze the friends and neighbors with the instant boil" trick, I use a one quart enamelled cast iron saucepan, half full of water, on my most powerful (small) element with boost (3300W). It's just a trick. :) But it develops a rolling boil in about half a minute.

As to pot size, my cooktop does fine with pans that are a bit too big for the rings, but my Mr. Induction (cheap) portable didn't have enough power to spread the heat to the outside of a pot that wasn't much bigger on the bottom than the element circle on the unit. Very frustrating. One perfectly hot perfect circle in the middle and a barely warm pan outside of it.

You might try a different pot, and you'll definitely get more joy from a double power unit. I've noticed an appreciable difference even between my 2500W and 3300W (boosted) elements, with only 3cm difference in diameter.

f.y.i. Any doubling of voltage = a quadrupling of power.

Therefore, a 220V appliance has an advantage over a 110V appliance, which is larger than might appear, to anyone who reads and remembers that the voltage is double.

D: in this case, there is no quadrupling of power. We're talking going from 1800 to 3000.

The difference between a 7" 3000w unit and a 12" 3600w unit is 600 more watts, a 20% power increase. The advantage of the 12" hob is that you can put larger pans on it and spread the 'heat' out over a larger area.

I have the Cooktek Apogee. The fan is louder than my convection microwave. One day I'll get up the courage to swap out the fan.

The reason it's taking a long time to boil water is that you're boiling GALLONS instead of QUARTS.

Oh, yes. The 3000w and 3600w are more powerful than your range top units. But bear in mind that those Calrod rangetop units will get cherry red whereas an induction unit will not. The induction units usually have a temperature cutoff to protect the internal electronics. Somewhere around *500f or a bit more. Should be sufficient to boil water.

An update.

I did pick up the built-in Thermador 220v 3600w with 12 inch disk. It has the smaller inside disk and then the larger outside ring.

I've got it installed. Using the same pot as before, and two gallons of water, it will boil in 21 minutes. Which is the same time the 2600w electric coil stove will boil water.

The larger disk size definitely allows for more even heating of my larger pans.

I'm really impressed with a "real" induction burner. The 1800w portable was ok, but with this one I can actually cook.

It's also a weird experience not facing the wall while cooking. Since this thing is on the corner of an island I have two views to choose from!

Thanks for all the advice!
Jim

Congrats on the purchase!

When you boiled, did you use boost?

The short answer is "no" ...

This cooktop has the inner disk and an outer ring. My understanding of the instruction manual is that boost turns on the outer ring. But, since this was a large pot and this cooktop turns on the outer ring with large pots, the outer ring was already on ...

What I don't get is how boost would work on the smaller pots. The outer ring isn't on since it's a smaller pot, it's only sitting on the inner disk and shouldn't reap any benefit from the outer ring at all?

My current assumption is that boost throws more power at the inner disk?

Either way, I'm not complaining. I found two of these on eBay for what I consider to be a song. (If I could rearrange things to move the other appliances I keep on this island, I could install the second one and have a 6 burner kitchen.)

Jim

I have Gaggenau, which is a sister brand, and mine is the 24" from Europe with one large double element and two smaller side elements. On it, the large, outer ring does boost, but not when the smaller side elements are in use.

Are you sure yours isn't similar? My unit is rated to boost to 4400W on the large outer ring+inner element. That's kind of the whole point. :) If it gets too hot, as I think I mentioned higher in this thread, it won't boost, but when you start off with a large kettle of cool water, boost gives you a nice l'il kick in the pants.

Try it.

The outer ring turns on automatically if you have a pot big enough to cover it. The inner element is on too as far as I know. Boost, however, requires you to choose the boost function. With a large pot, that applies only to the outer ring, but it makes a big difference. With a smaller pot, in the center element only, boost will use the twinning with the outer ring for the extra power without disturbing the other elements. At least, this is my understanding of how it works.

Try it. ;) If it doesn't work, you've lost nothing. :)

Tried it. That's why I was getting confused, I think. It didn't work that way. Your comments just prompted me to get out the manual and read it again. Now I don't know where I got what I was thinkin' the first time 'round. :)

The manual specifically states that powerboost will heat the contents of the pan faster than the maximum power level. It also states it can be activated at any time SO LONG AS the outer ring is NOT working: "In the outer ring, the powerboost function is not available."

I'll probably do a timed test with a smaller pan with powerboost on vs off.

This is a Thermador model CIT151DS. It's a single-burner cooktop. You can see it at: http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/CIT151DS.html

How did you find out how much power your boost is? I've not found it listed anywhere for mine.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Thermador CIT151DS

Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot that you were looking for a domino! (Like, duh, it was in the thread title.) My mistake. I was thinking about the full sized cooktop.

This is a very intriguing thread. It's interesting to read about your experience. I've also seen these units on eBay and have wondered about installing three or four of them instead of getting a regular cooktop. The downside would seem to be more cut outs and more electrical lines to run -- which might equal extra expense. Also these don't seem to have timers on them. But that might be a decent trade off for the flexibility of hob placement.

Since we need to use a pop-up downdraft, we could run these in a line, so they would all be "back burners" -- and hence closer to the downdraft. I've seen long and wide induction cooktops on European websites, but they aren't sold here in the US. There also are a couple of awesome Gutmann downdrafts (Futura and Seagull) that look like they would do a better job of capturing steam and grease, but they are about $8k, so not in the picture either.

Just trying to think about options here. Any thoughts about going this route? (Many, many years ago Dacor sold individual induction units that could be installed separately. I've saved the pix in a "one of these days" file. Now when we can afford to go this route, of course, Dacor no longer makes them!)

Thanks in advance for the thoughts.

Here is a link that might be useful: Futura Downdraft in Action

The video was cool!

I can't think of any reason why they couldn't be lined up end to end or side to side or anything else, actually. (Diagonally in a corner just popped into my mind.)

These particular units do have a timer. They don't turn off the hob, though. It also seems the time only offers two short beeps. If you were in another room, you could definitely miss it. I'm going to continue using the Polder timer/thermometer that will keep beeping until I turn it off.

These particular units require a 20amp line run to them. Depending on your setup, you could do things that might save on the installation. One suggestion to me when I was thinking about installing both was to run one heavier gauge line from the main breaker panel to a smaller panel in the island with the 20amp protection there. Of course, my case is probably different from most as my "island" is more of a "cart" or "table" in that it is on wheels and is movable.

I started a thread in the wiring section here at GW about my options to wire this up - it contains the above suggestion.

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/wiring/msg0623570029315.html?6

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Wiring in a movable island

Jim: Thanks for the information and especially the link to the wiring thread. Very instructive. The small panel idea is pretty slick.

Installing those individual units just might be a doable alternative, even foregoing timers that turn off the hobs. Hmm. Just have to think about this a bit. Would hate to cut all those holes and then have some downside appear that we hadn't considered before.

Again, thank you!