We had a bit of trouble with our cooker at the weekend. We put the fan oven on then a couple of minutes later, the cooker went off. It had tripped the circuit breaker but it stayed on when reset. However, the oven was lighting up and the fan was spinning, but after ten minutes of heating, it was still cold.
Our cooker has previous form. A while back, the oven developed a somewhat worse fault. When you turned it off, the fan stopped, but the heating coil stayed on and could be seen glowing cherry red. (It made a horrible smell, which alerted us to the problem). When this happened, I had a look in the back to work out if I could disconnect the main oven element so that we could still use the upper oven/grill (& light the gas rings on the hob) but the wiring was such that it wasn’t actually possible to do that easily as the oven was fed from the main controller unit which wasn’t readily accessible. Fortunately, however, I worked out that provided I didn’t actually set the digital clock, the oven stayed off.
Anyway, we got the Engineer out last time who swapped the controller and all was well. The cooker had a five year parts guarantee, but the labour wasn’t free after the first year.
This time round, we looked at the call out cost- £99. We could buy a new oven element for about £50 though. Further searching turned up the part for £30. So, I took a risk- buy the part and hope that is what was actually wrong. It was, so we now have a working oven again faster and cheaper than getting the Engineer in. (The element was really easy to remove and replace, apart from a bit of contortionism with my head in the oven).
Next time we buy a cooker, I think we’ll go back to gas. They seem to last donkey’s years…
(On a roll, I also put a plug back onto an extension reel and replaced a couple of blown bulbs in our cars. Finally for an encore, I put the bin out.)
