Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Furnishing your common house kitchen - commercial or home grade?

[Douglas G. Larson (ddhle]

There are two reasons for considering commercial grade appliances, (e.g.
range hoods, stove/oven, refrigerators, etc) versus residential grade. The
first reason is your local codes. You are, of course, bound by those.

But the second reason is what I call durability/robustness. Commercial grade
appliances are built to take lots of use and abuse, i.e. they are robust. As
an example, a few years ago when we were looking at replacing one of our
refrigerators (we actually have 3) one of the commercial grade models we
were looking at had door hinges that would hold up to one million opens and
closes. No residential grade appliance has that degree of robustness. 

For range hoods, we originally installed a used residential model that we
found cheap. It started having problems after about a year and by the 2nd
year or so we replaced the fan. We ended up doing a custom job that used a
robust fan mounted on the roof of the common house and we kept the existing
hood itself. 

Your common house kitchen will likely get lots of use. I strongly reccommend
you design it with that in mind. Saving money by going with residential
grade appliances, may in the long run, not save you anything. Commercial
grade appliances, like residential, come in a variety of prices. You can buy
a high-end or a low-end and the low-end will likely be much more costly than
a residential grade appliance. As with anything, there are good brands and
poorer brands and occaisonally you get a lemon, but over all, the
residential grade appliance probably will not last as long as the commercial
grade will. 



Douglas G. Larson 
Songaia Cohousing