Repairing Your Appliances

Posted on: 14 April 2015

When you head to your kitchen to cook dinner for yourself or your family, the last thing you expect is for your oven to not work. You try all of the usual tricks you know, unpluggling it and plugging it back in, turning all of the dials off and then back on, or maybe even resetting your circuit breakers, but nothing seems to work. Rather than throw in the towel on dinner, get to know some of the basic issues that could be causing your stove not to work. Then, if you try to take care of these issues yourself and the oven still doesn't work, you can call an appliance repair professional to come in and take a look at your oven while you order a pizza.

A Blown Internal Fuse

One of the most common reasons your oven will not turn on or heat up is a blown fuse. Because you have already checked the kitchen circuit breaker, you know that it is not a main fuse in your house that has been blown.

Instead, it may be an internal fuse that is located inside of your range. These fuses can be located in the back of the stove unit, under the stovetop range, or just in the back of the oven heating space. Check your oven manual if you can find it, or explore your stove to find these fuses. Inspect the fuses to see if any have blown or been damaged.

Replace any blown fuses with the same type (amperage) of fuses, and try to fire up the oven again. If this still does not work, you may also need to find an internal circuit breaker and reset it inside your oven.

Burned Out Heating Element

If the light inside of your oven and all of the other electrical elements seem to be working but your oven just won't heat up properly, the problem is likely not a circuit but rather the heating element inside your oven. When you turn your oven on to bake, keep a close eye on the raised metal panel on the bottom of your oven.

This is the part of the oven that should go from black to bright red when the oven is heating up. If it does not light up or part of the heating element remains dark while the rest reddens up, this means you have a defective heating element. To fix this, you will need to order or purchase a new heating element for your oven. Then, turn the power off to your oven and remove the damaged heating element by first removing the brackets that hold it in place and the bracket at the back of the oven.

Take note of the way the now exposed wires are attached to the heating element. This will have to be exactly the same with the new heating element to function properly and safely. Now all that's left to do is detach the old heating element and attach the new one. Then reattach the brackets, plug your stove in, and give it a try. You should have a fully-functional oven with this small appliance repair.

Now that you know the common problems that cause your oven to malfunction, you will know how to go through the basic repair process yourself. If, however, you do not feel comfortable performing appliance repairs yourself or these steps do not get your stove up and running again, call an appliance repair service, like American Appliance INC, as soon as possible to get it taken care of.