Old GE stove - none of the burners will heat up at all. The oven light is on, the little red indicator light is on. I’m calling a repairman today. I’ve had other stoves where one burner poops out, the others are OK, but isn’t it unusual for all 4 burners to stop? What do you think is causing this?
First thing I’d check would be a fuse inside the stove. If I knew how to find the fuses inside the stove.
I assume this is an electric stove… At some point, all the burners get electricity from one point. There must be something wrong with that “point”. Maybe a short or an open circuit.
I hope it’s fixable. Oddly, the refrigerator right next to it didn’t stop, it’s still humming, but it isn’t cooling down properly. But that’s a whole OTHER problem.
Hmmm… depending on the hum, the compressor could be fried but the fans still running. I had that happen to a portable air conditioner unit.
The stove is tied into the “A” leg and “B” leg of your home’s wiring, as well as ground. The “A” and “B” legs are each at 110 volts, but they are of opposite phase, so Your stove burners will run on 220 volts by completing the circuit from one leg to the other. The light inside your oven (and probably the little red indicator light) run on 110 volts, by connecting between ground and the “A” leg (or the “B” leg).
Best guess is that the wiring connection for one of the two legs has failed; the other leg is available to power the lights, but the burners can’t complete a circuit to draw power.
Problem could be inside the stove (slim chance), it could be where the stove is wired into the wall (more likely), or it could be a problem with the circuit breaker (at your home’s electrical panel) wherein one phase has tripped but the other has not.
Have you tried turning the circuit breaker for your stove off and then on again to see if that resets it?
If cycling the breaker doesn’t help, and if you have experience dealing with residential electrical wiring, you can remove the cover from your home’s electrical panel and use a DVM to check the voltage coming out of both legs of the stove’s circuit breaker. Each one of them should be showing ~110 volts (measured relative to a good ground). If one of them is zero, then the breaker needs to be replaced. If both legs of the breaker are delivering power, then the problem is in your home’s wiring or inside the stove.
I had a similar problem with a dryer. The ground lug was broken at the power cord. The motor had 110v, but the heating element didn’t have 220v.
:dubious:
You sure it was the ground lug that was broken? The symptoms you describe are analogous to the OP’s: 220V is not available, but 110V is, which suggests the ground connection is intact, but one of the two hot phases is not.
if you use fuses for your electrical supply then you would have two independent fuses to supply the range receptacle. one could blow or fail and the other be good.
one side of the receptacle or cord/plug can go bad as well.
The stove has a completely separate electrical supply from the refrigerator, so this should be completely irrelevant.
Unless there is a major problem with the electrical supply to your house, affecting one phase of your power. But that would show up in many other appliances in the house.
(a) usually its the fuse. If it’s teh sort with the knobs at the back, above the stove - maybe the panel under the knobs pops off. Some ha a panel on the very front to, or a lid above the knobs, that popped off; then there were those screw-in glass fuses that looked like the bottom of a lightbulb.
Sometimes in a power “brownout” the equipment can freeze. For the fridge, I’d try pulling the plug then see if it works fine after that.
Sometimes the “timer” will go on frost-free fridges. In old fridges, it was a hock-puck shape or something. It was a timer with a motor and contacts. If the motor died, it might stick in “cool”, which means every few weeks you need to defrost manually. Or it would stick in “defrost”, meaning the part of the cycle where it heats the freezer coils to get rid of the ice. That turns your freezer into a bun-warmer.
or, your drain for frost-free - a plastic tube coming out the back to the evaporation pan - has frozen up or plugged with debris. The water can’t drain, it fills up in the freezer coils and freezes solid, making the cooling totally inefficient.
OK, the repairman came and said it was a bad fuse. He went out and got a replacement and the stove is working fine now. $91, but I guess it’s better than buying a new stove (as long as it holds up just a few more years) - it’s not used much, but some things you just have to cook on a stove.