“Say,” I mentioned to Alex, “shouldn’t we get one of those new induction cooktops?”

“Sure,” she said, after reading a few articles like this one, and we began looking at options.

When our condominium was built, around 2008, natural gas was still seen as a reasonable choice. Our kitchen came with a four-burner gas cooktop and a slide-in electric oven. Gas is not metered individually; the cost is shared as part of common expenses.

With the wisdom of time, people came to see the drawbacks, both globally and for the individual, of relying on methane, Here in the Northwest, where electricity can be had without much use of fossil fuels, it makes sense to switch.

1. The cooktop swap

We had no trouble finding an induction cooktop the exact size and shape of our old gas appliance, from the same maker.  We knew there was 240-volt electrical service to the oven beneath it. What could go wrong? Fortunately, before we actually acquired the cooktop of our dreams, we talked to our long-time friend Peter, the electrician.

a. The cooktop requires a dedicated circuit.

This was not a huge surprise, but the wiring project Peter described would be both obtrusive and expensive, not the elegant outcome we desired.

b.  There’s only so much wiring you can do.

The electrical service to our building was not adequate to allow this conversion in more than a couple of apartments anyway.  I mulled this over briefly and came up with . . .

2. The ideal solution.

If you put the cooktop and the oven together in one stove, then they require only one circuit between them. Same basic equipment, just different packaging.

a. Making space.

Bosch, the maker of our original appliances, makes an induction range the exact width of our old oven. The big challenge would be to cut a slot in the black quartz countertop. There are people who do this sort of thing for a living, and we may still try to do this someday. We’ve noticed, though, that our counters just barely satisfy the minimum requirements for height and depth (and then only with some work on the existing floor and backsplash).

b. The contractor.

We were interested in re-facing some of our cabinets and getting a different range hood, so we found a contractor we thought might coordinate all this work and make sure that the stove fit. His vision of the job entailed replacing all of the cabinets though, and the countertops as well, since he refused to consider cutting them. This would have produced a nicer-looking result, but would have meant more waste than I could countenance. People planning a kitchen remodel, however, will have no reason not to take this approach and buy a stove. Rather than risk disappointment, we’re waiting until there’s a model that will work easily. Until then, we’ve got a temporary solution, and some other suggestions, listed below.

3. Temporary or low-budget solutions.

a. The workaround.

When our plans for a cooktop swap were first thwarted, someone mentioned that we could just get a hotplate. At the time this dorm-room-style substitute sounded pathetic, but in fact it has been our first step into induction cooking. It’s just the two of us, and we’re resolute about not entertaining, so we can go for as long as we want without using the gas burners. We’ll cook rice and let it fluff while we fry something to go on top of it, or bake cornbread in the oven while we make stew, etc. The old grate can remain as a lavish trivet, if desired.  We never needed more than two burners anyway, and it would be easy to get a second induction ring, or a double one. If taken too far, this concept would start to use up a lot of space.  Hence . . .

b. The radical workaround.

Once you realize that you don’t use your gas burners any more, you can just cover them up, or take them out. I had considered making a plug for the big hole in the counter, but I’ll bet a sheet of aluminum, bent to straddle the old cooktop, would be adequate to support a small herd of electric hobs. (The choice of material could be important.)  As a first approximation I built a low platform out of wood lugged home from the nearby hardware store. So far, the old grates are still there to provide support.   Some care is required not to use too many high-resistance appliances at once  (you need to be careful about using the microwave at the same time).

c. The reverse swap-out.

Once you start thinking about substituting appliances, other possibilities appear. We stopped fussing over holiday dinners a long time ago, so we can get by with an air fryer instead of our oven. We could take the old oven out — and probably pick up some space for storing pots and pans. That also means we could get the induction cooktop we originally wanted after all, and plug it in where the oven had been hooked up. For practice, we’ve bought a toaster oven and now use it in place of our big oven.

By the way, the gas shut-off for our cooktop is in the cabinet just to the left of the oven. Installers would want this line disconnected and capped before delivering the new induction cooktop. We have at least turned ours off.

4. Irony.

Induction cooking works only on cookware that responds to electromagnetic waves. I wasn’t sure about our frying pans, so before we bought our new hob I got them out to test them with a big magnet. I wasn’t worried about our big pot and saucepans — they said “stainless steel” right there on the bottom. Turns out, though, there are half a dozen common types of stainless steel, and only two of those kinds are compatible with an induction ring. Since our new cooktop was so cheap, we have so far spent more on cookware than on cooktop.

5. Other ways to add capacity.

Just for reference:  the Smart Panel.  A home rarely needs all its outlets at once, so it may be possible to increase the number of circuits without troubling the electric company for extra service.

And a company called Impulse proposes to time-shift demand using batteries. Here’s their blog post explaining why gas stoves seem particularly hard to replace.

That’s what we know about induction cooking so far. I’ll update this if we decide to go further.