We have decided to add a small outdoor kitchen to our pool build. It will be fairly simple - about 6.5 ft straight along a brick wall.

In order to get a little bit of counter space, we intend to get a grill no more than about 30" wide. It will be run on natural gas.

We have looked at Weber (have one now that we love but their built in versions require 24" behind the grill!), DCS, Viking, Bull, Summerset and some others but there seem to be more names in that business than anybody can follow.

Can anybody share their experience (good or bad) with built in grills?
Right now we are very confused and hoping to find one in the next week or so.

I have a FireMagic and I love it. The poor thing has been out in the elements for over 3 years and it still looks good. Lots of people like the Char-Broil RED Infrared grills. I've seen people take a 'Cart' type grill and make a permanent structure around it.

Check out this site:

http://www.bbqsource-forums.com/invboar ... owforum=47

We have a summerset and so far it works great and it is not as expensive as Viking and others. It came with our outdoor kitchen. Look in the sig bar for this install. Hope this helps

Thanks for the input. We went with a Napoleon. It had gotten good reviews in the forum that Nightmare pointed to. We also looked at DCS which had gotten very good reviews but it did not have a thermometer(!) and only 2 burners. The Napoleon is made in Canada so I hope the quality is OK.
They just made the structure of cinder blocks yesterday so now it needs to be tiled and granite countertop added. We can't wait......

I have a Napoleon as well. That is what I was going to recommend. For me the price/quality were just right. Hope you enjoy it. I coupled mine with a Big Green Egg and couldn't be happier. They are both get built into an outdoor kitchen as we speak. Now I just have to find time to finish.

Riles

For future interested members stay away from Viking. I bought their top of the line unit and it has been a POS since year one. I have had a half a dozen sear burners go bad and after five years it rusted completely through in spots. Their warranty, even the lifetime on stainless, is worthless. I get mad every time I look at it...

Sorry to hear about that DC. I think that sounds outrageous for the price tag that those Viking grills come with. It was at least twice the price as far as I remember.
So we got the Napoleon and it seems fine - it has not been installed yet but I will follow up.

The Napoleon looks like a very nice grill. I would probably get a Lynx as it has the best warranty that I have found. Lifetime without pro-rating of major parts. The ceramic burners crack in 3-5 years and need replacing. I've always loved infra-red. I owned the original TEC grill but foolishly decided to "upgrade" to Viking when we moved to a new house. Be careful when you get started. Cooking at 1800 degrees takes some getting used to.