Okay, I’m not as panicked as that title might sound, but I thought I’d get the benefit of you Dopers’ experience. The delivery guys are coming with the new oven in a couple of hours, and I’m going to install it myself.
It seems pretty simple. I found these instructions on the Web, and they agree exactly with what I’ve been told by guys at the stores that sell them (and who wanted as much as $100 for an installation charge). I will, of course, also read the oven’s instructions carefully.
This is the first time I’ve ever done anything relating to gas. Although the stakes are a little higher (asphixiation or fiery death!) than small household plumbing or electrical wiring jobs (both of which I’ve done), this doesn’t look like rocket science.
Do you have any tips or hints or terrible experiences to relate that might help me? FYI: I’m in a condo and the incoming gas pipe already has a cutoff valve installed, so I won’t have to shut off the whole building. I have a new hose, the teflon tape, etc.
New oven come with a child safety anti-tip device. I’s a good idea to use one of these.
When attaching the gas line you should use anti-leak gas line goop, or yellow gas line tape.
If you have an old house you might have to change fittings or shut off valves, because it seems ‘they’ change gas line regulations every couple of years.
It’s an easy job, but if you get stuck go to your local mom and pop hardware store and say, ‘I need help with…’ Lowes or home Depot will be unable to help.
Don’t forget to check for leaks with dish soap and water. Also, check the outside shut off line you mentioned. Sometimes these develop slow leaks after you touch them. If it does leak there should be a collar nut that you can tighten to stop it. Also, if the outside or inside shutoff line will not turn, loosen the collar nut. The handles sometimes break easy, remember they might not have been turned in years.
My oven has a magical little red button way in back of the stove & if the gas goes off, that button has to be pushed for the gas to come on again. So check your stove for one of those. I actually got all the hints I needed from a used stove shop.
Also, you may want to check with your local gas utility to see if they offer free inspections. PG&E (here in California) will send out a technician to inspect any gas appliances for you free of charge.
A guy decides to take up parachuting. On his first dive, he pulls the ripcord, and nothing happens. He pulls the emergency cord, and nothing happens. Just as he’s about to panic, he sees another guy in the air beside him.
“Hey”, he yells, “Do you know anything about parachutes?”
“No”, the other guy replies, “Do you know anything about installing gas ovens?”
I used Teflon tape (I believe it was white, the package will say if it is for gas). Only was needed at one connection, the other connections do not require anything.
I also installed new metal pig tails for both.
Excellent instructions come with all gas appliances… followed them and you should have no problems.
Thanks for all your help. As it happens, I’ll need a professional installer anyway. The gas pipe and cutoff valve stick out about 8 inches from the wall. The old stove had a recessed area at that point, but the new one doesn’t, so I can’t push it all the way against the wall. I’ll have to have the pipe cut (before the valve) and a right-angle fitting installed.
There’s just no such thing as a simple appliance installation.
The installer came in this morning, made the plumbing changes needed, hooked it all up, did a fine job. $260.
We push the oven against the wall only to find that it’s about 1.5 inches deeper than the old one, and now I can’t open the drawer in the counter 90 degrees to the oven, because it hits the oven’s handle.
D’OH!
So now I go back to see if there are shallower units, and what the store’s return policy is on ovens. Or I can cut down the drawer front. Or just open the oven whenever I want to use that drawer.
And people ask me if being a kitchen designer is easy! At least you didn’t pay a “designer” buckets of money to give you a plan with conflicts like that, I see those all the time.
Where I live you have to get a certified gasfitter to install the oven and then stamp the warranty to validate it, otherwise it won’t be under warranty…
Before I purchased the cook top and oven I went to the manufactures web site and downloaded the specs for both. Come to find out I had to cut a larger hole for the cook top, then that required a redesign of the drawers on each side.
Next the new oven was 6 inches shorter than the old one and that required building a higher platform to set it on and a new front wood panel to fill the hole. The store delivered the oven and agreed to set in place… they first said they wasn’t allowed to that, I assured them I had already disconnected the gas. After they took out the old one I installed the new platform for the new one to set on and they set the oven. It would have been too heavy for me to have done alone. All I had to was hook up the gas… about 5 minutes for I had the new pigtail on the valve. The gas part was the simple part of both installations.
The end of the story: I returned stove 1 to the store. They didn’t have one of the proper size in stock, and it would have been a couple of weeks to get one from them. A different store was able to sell me stove 2, with proper depth, and as a bonus, it was the biscuit color I preferred, instead of white as stove 1 had been. Price was about the same as stove 1.
Stove 1 was taken away and stove 2 delivered within a couple hours, and I hooked up the gas to stove 2 with no problems and cooked my first dinner that night. And oh yeah, I can open the drawer okay.
So all’s well that ends well, except that it cost $300 more than I expected for the plumbing work and the extra delivery charges. Oh well.