Are gas stoves supposed to produce a sticky residue?
In addition to the effect I posited above, gas stoves have another, probably much more significant, and as far as I can see almost inevitable set of oily/sooty emissions problems all to do with the air intake system. Natural gas is mostly methane, and one volume of methane requires two volumes of pure oxygen to burn completely. Air is only about a fifth oxygen, however, so every volume of natural gas passing through a stove requires at least ten times as much air in order to burn completely– and that air must be thoroughly mixed with the gas before it reaches the burner, otherwise the flame will be yellowish and very sooty. How is the air mixed with the gas? Every stove I know of relies upon the Bernoulli effect to draw air through small openings in the gas line ahead of the burner. But pulling in ten times the volume of gas using the Bernoulli effect requires a pretty healthy flow, and I don’t think the
I’ve cooked with gas all my life, and don’t have this buildup. However, I have seen it in other houses – but I’ve also seen it on electric stoves. it’s cooking residue, mostly oils. No matter what cooktop you have, you have to clean it thoroughly if you use it a lot. I wipe down the stove after dinner every day. About once a month, I scrub the stovetop with an abrasive cleanser or baking soda – and do the same to the surrounding walls. No buildup. A hood will definitely help, but I don’t have one right now, and still no buildup. It’s just a question of regular maintenance. Just like the bathtub, if you never wipe the thing down, it’s gonna get gross. The oven might be ‘self-cleaning’ but the stovetop isn’t.
It’s grease- I’ve worked in all-gas kitchens and all-electric kitchens (commercial) and neither had any difference in the amount of residue. If there was that kind of stuff in natural gas, the pipes would clog. Or, looking at it the other way, many of us use natural gas to heat our homes. That burns FAR more gas than cooking does, and there’s never that sort of buildup on the furnace or chimney. Heck, the newest furnaces vent out the side of the house- no buildup on those, that’s for sure.
It’s grease or or food residue. Gas burning stoves (the heating/ fireplace kind, open or sealed) never ever have “sticky residue” inside. Sometimes there is soot and/or white sulfur deposits in the units or on the vent caps, never anything sticky. Cooking stoves burn cleaner then hearth products as they are not burning with a yellow flame (if properly adjusted). Even if the range was completely screwed up it would coat the wall with soot long before any pipeline residue (pipe threading oil for example) could build up as it would burn and contribute to the soot problem that you do not have. Even if (as jamjam suggests) the pots were impinging the primary issue would be still be soot, not grease/sticky crud. Install a proper hood and make sure the hood discharge venting has proper clearance to all combustibles inside the walls in case it sucks up a range top fire.
