Cooktop Installation, the Dummy Version

Gas cooktop

We have wondered many times whether some of our serial dumbasses are even aware that they're misinforming their readers. After all, does your average fool even know that he or she is a fool? Do these people realize it when they leave out important information, miss critical steps in a process, or conflate two entirely different answers into one? Take, for instance, eHow.com's Naima Manal (who also plied her trade at HubPages.com and Seekyt): was she aware that her "research" was insufficient when she penned "How to Install a Countertop Cooktop"¹ for HomeSteady.com? Up front, we'll admit that the redundant title isn't Naima's, it's eHow's – but that's all the slack we're going to cut this serial dumbass.

Naima went to one of the top DIY experts on the web, Ron Hazelton, for advice. It's not Ron's fault that she screwed it up... Thanks to Ron's instructions, Manal gets the sequence of events right, though she certainly could have found something more compact - the first 8 minutes of this 12-minute video are about removing the old cooktop and vent hood and installing a new hood. Apparently by the time she got to the cooktop installation, Naima had dozed off. We know that because she says

"Apply pipe tape or sealant around the threads of the gas line connection if it is a gas-powered cooktop." Number one, DO NOT EVER use ordinary Teflon® tape on natural gas lines: it's a fire hazard! Number two, and far, far less important, this is not the "gas line connection"; it's the manifold. Number three, use pipe dope (sealant) rated for natural gas or LPG - not for water. Naima continues transcribing Hazelton's instructions, except somewhere she came up with this bullshit (we looked twice: it's not in his instructions): "Remove the cooktop, turn it over and apply an even bead of fire-proof silicone sealant around the underside of the counter's edge."

First off, we have no earthly idea why you would seal "around the underside of the counter's edge" or even what "the underside of the counter's edge" means, for that matter. Second off, you do not seal a cooktop in place a bead of sealant. We know that for a fact, because we -- unlike Naima -- have installed a cooktop. A cooktop clamps in place (also not covered by Hazelton) and a glass cooktop may have a silicone gasket, but you don't use a sealant because you may want to take the cooktop out some day. Dumbass! And third, merely as an aside, do you know of any silicone products that aren't fireproof?

Naima then repeats her PFTE tape instructions and blithely says to "check for leaks" but doesn't say how -- perhaps the most damning evidence that she's not competent to give these instructions.

Here is an actual cooktop installation guide (to some random cooktop) which, had Naima bothered to read it or something similar, contains the information above. This fool didn't bother to do real research, however, and that means she is definitely Dumbass of the Day material -- and dangerous, to boot!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_7248435_install-countertop-cooktop.html

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