I appreciate the sentiment but, it’s perfectly easy to work safely on a simple appliance like an electric cooker without calling an electrician, if you have the barest idea of how electricity works and an ounce of common sense. That’s the joy of having circuit breakers, a multimeter, and a high school education.
Faced with a non-working element, I flipped the breaker and replaced the entire terminal. (Extra cautious, I probably could have just rewired the old one, but it looked a bit manky.) There’s not a lot to get wrong. Two leads. Splice 'em, make sure everything is properly insulated, put everything back, and turn on the juice.
It was a bit troubling that something was still amiss, but it wasn’t the result of incaution or error on my part. It was puzzling, but not using it, and not attempting to fix the symptom of the problem without getting some feedback is sufficiently prudent. I could have just changed the knobs and kept using it the way it is, without getting any tingly sensations when stirring and adjusting the heat-- but I didn’t like the idea of leaving a fault somewhere, waiting for a spilled pot or something to make the situation dangerous. I knew that many people have probably experienced the same thing and could give me a hint about where to look. A stove is the simplest appliance in your house, apart from a table-lamp. There’s only so many things that can go wrong with it.
As for “qualified servicemen,” I’m all for calling them when I’m not confident that something is within my ability. The last time I did was when an old breaker box became oversensitive and started tripping constantly, from just the load of a few lights. I don’t work on the breaker box, since there’s no meta-breaker box.
I want a professional for that. This guy came out and told me it would have to be replaced. No surprise there. The surprise came when he used a screwdriver to half-assedly arc-weld the damn breakers in the “On” position, raking it across the hot terminals while holding the switches closed, about eight times, until they stuck that way, “so the power would stay on until the hardware store opens tomorrow.” Sparks shooting all over my damned basment – five, six feet, into piles of empty boxes. I hustled the guy out of there, put on heavy rubber gloves, turned the box off, made sure no fires were smouldering, and spent the night by candlelight until I could call someone else the next day. :eek:
I would much rather take care of most household electrics myself, rather than trust some guy on the strength of an ad in the Yellow Pages. If you do it yourself, you know it’s done right.
Anyway, fishing for ideas saved me a bit of trial-and-error (not to mention moving the stove for access – whew) which, although perfectly safe, would have been time-consuming. Yay!