I’ve seen this in some newer houses (and of course on TV reno shows) and as someone who is 5’11" I just can’t get there. Probably +40% of what I use a microwave for is boiling water. I do not want to have to bend down to remove a cup of boiling water, especially if I can not directly see the cup. Mine now is mounted above our range and does double duty as a range hood. I’m not going to use the word vent. I reserve that for actual vent fans that pull the air and place it outside the residence. (Of course that gets even more complicated in today’s new builds with limitations on negative inside pressure.)
At somewhere just above face height it is taller than I would prefer, but I can see what is in it from most places in the kitchen. Also with it being slightly above me I don’t get blasted in the face with hot steam when removing anything. I also despise combo oven / ranges for the “let’s melt your face off while you reach into this extremely hot box and remove hot things” situation you get with the oven being below you.
Obviously this is all height dependent. I can’t imagine being mid six foot or taller and using standard height counters or sinks. My back hurts just thinking about doing nightly dishes in a sink that would be +4" lower than what I use now.
i finally bought an electric kettle. it’s so much more convenient than a microwave for water. it’s faster and quieter. and you can get kinds that keep the water warm if you don’t quite get there in time
( also, i swear this isn’t my imagination - but for some reason microwaved water seems to cool faster than boiled. i don’t know if there’s science behind that or not. but it seems to be so to me )
My microwave, (the redundant one, in the box, in the living room, that I’m not living in yet) used to be installed very low: In the basement.
There wasn’t room in the kitchen for it, so it sat on the basement worktable, beside the espresso maker. Mom liked how baked potatoes turned out if they were nuked first and then put in the oven for finishing. Good memories of carrying up plates of steaming potatoes from the basement. (Imagine that kind of Addams Family style, because me, going “shit! this plate is hot!” doesn’t work.)
Hot pads and oven mitts should also live near our nukers! That shit does get extreeemely hott.
I’ll often put a hotter’n fuck just-nuked plate on top of another one just pulled outta the dish drainer, so I can carry it and/or eat off it without burning myself.
Kettles are also much safer for boiling water. In a smooth vessel, a microwave can superheat the water such that when something is introduced to the water (say, a teabag), the sudden abundance of nucleation points causes the water to convert to steam explosively.
The relatively rough inner surface of your average kettle means that bubbles form easily as the water boils and prevents this superheating.
Reminds me of a friend who rented a basement student apartment that must have been renovated for hobbits. The countertop was a foot lower than standard. He got in the habit of moving his ottoman in front of the sink to kneel on when he did the dishes to save his back and he’s only 5’8".
When my dad renovated his kitchen, he had them raise the counters a good 6”. Every time I’d come over to cook, I’d make a huge point of hefting my arms straight up over my head in order to place the grocery bags onto the counter, making a snarky comment at him. He would simply remind me that it was HIS kitchen, not mine!
I’m 5’5”, which is normal height for a woman of my age. And therein lies the clue: kitchen counters were historically sized for the most likely cook in the kitchen: a woman.
My travel trailer has it right below the propane stove. But, we have that at normal residential counter height, so it’s not too bad. Most RVs I’ve been in have weirdly low counters, and then that’s a terrible place for it.
Are you in a country with 120V or 240V electricity? Electric kettles in the US are definitely slower than in Europe.
I still use a small one for single cups of water, because it uses less power and gives me temperature controls for teas that need lower than boiling temperature, but because it’s low power it’s unsurprisingly a bit slower than the microwave.
