Before you call
Oven not heating or running off-temperature
An oven that is out by twenty degrees and an oven that is stone cold are different problems, and the first one is worth measuring before you conclude anything. Ovens drift with age and most people blame the recipe.
Safety
If you can smell gas, do not touch any switch. Leave the house, open a door on your way out, and call the gas utility from outside.
- 1
Put an oven thermometer on the middle shelf and preheat to 350°F.
Wait twenty minutes after the preheat tone, not zero — the walls are still absorbing heat when it chimes. If it reads within about 25°F, the oven is behaving normally and can usually be calibrated in the settings menu rather than repaired.
- 2
Watch the bake element with the oven on, in a dark kitchen.
The bottom element should glow evenly along its whole length. A dark section, a blister, or a visible split means it has failed. On a gas oven, the igniter should glow orange and the burner should light within about a minute — an igniter that glows but never lights the gas is the classic failure and looks like it is working.
- 3
Check whether bake works but broil does not, or the reverse.
They are separate elements on separate circuits. One working and the other not narrows the fault immediately and rules out the things people usually assume first, like the thermostat or the control board.
- 4
If the door locked after a self-clean cycle, let it cool completely.
The lock will not release until the oven is below a safe temperature, which can take a couple of hours. Do not force it. Self-clean cycles also blow thermal fuses fairly often — if the oven is dead after one, that is the likely reason and it is a real repair.
- 5
Check the door closes flush and the seal is intact all the way round.
A door that does not seal loses heat continuously, so the oven cycles constantly and still bakes unevenly. Hinges wear and the door starts sitting proud at the top; you can usually see the gap by eye.
Where to stop
When to call a technician
Not for our convenience. These are the points where carrying on is either unsafe or makes the repair bigger.
- You can smell gas at any point — call the utility first, not us.
- The element is visibly split or blistered. Replacing it means working on a mains circuit.
- The oven is more than 50°F out and calibration will not bring it back.
- It trips the breaker when it reaches temperature.
- The door is locked and stays locked after the oven has been cold for several hours.
An on-site diagnosis is $65.00, credited toward the repair if you go ahead. If this page has already fixed it, better still — you owe us nothing.