Stop Wasting Heat: A Better Way to Run Your Deck Oven
Most restaurant deck ovens use those old-school resistive heating wires. You know the ones. They basically just heat up the air, and then you hope that air eventually heats up your food. It’s slow, and honestly, it’s a waste of electricity. Switching over to infrared (IR) elements changes the whole vibe of the cook. Instead of waiting on the air, IR sends radiant energy straight into the food. It’s direct. It’s efficient. The difference in how it feels With old coils, you’re stuck waiting forever for the oven cavity to actually get hot. It’s a drag. IR elements, though? They hit your target temp almost instantly. You get a much faster ramp-up. That means you’re using fewer kilowatt-hours every time you bake. Plus, since you aren’t relying on air to move the heat around, way less energy leaks out through the oven walls. Getting it installed If you’re looking at replacements, keep an eye on the wattage density. IR tubes pack a lot of punch into a small space, which lets you control different zones of the deck way more accurately. We’ve made these as drop-in replacements. They fit right into your existing brackets, so you don’t have to rip out your entire control board. Just a heads-up: double-check that your controllers can keep up with how fast IR reacts. You don’t want the temp to overshoot and burn your product. The catch (because there’s always one) Here is the trade-off. You’ll get a sharper sear and a much better crust—the kind of crunch people love. But these elements are a bit pickier. If grease splatters onto the quartz tube, it creates hotspots. Those hotspots are killers; they’ll burn out the tube way faster than it should go. So, you’ve got to keep things clean. If you’re cooking with a lot of fats and you get lazy with the cleaning, the quartz won’t last. It’s a simple deal: you get lower power bills and faster cooks, but you have to be a bit more diligent about scrubbing your oven.