Appliance Repair

[Kelena]

So, who we like for appliance repair these days? My stovetop works great - my oven is on the blink. I'm morally opposed to cooking but sometimes I have friends over who don't feel that way and want to make bread or something.

[Hunt Stoddard]

Just out of curiosity, why are you morally against cooking? Or is that a joke?

Is it a gas or electric range? You can usually isolate the source of the problem with enough diagnostics, even without touching it.

[Tink]

If you are morally opposed to cooking you may be morally opposed to troubleshooting and repairing your stove, but here goes some tips.
Most of the time on an electric stove, oven and dishwasher dry cycle the heating element is the culprit. On all, the heating element can be easily removed once the units power source (fuse/circuit breaker) is turned off.
Once element is disconnected, take a continuity tester obtained at your local hardware store or Home Depot and touch to each end of element. If tester does not light up, you need a new element. If it lights up, Element is good and your problem would be somewhere else within the appliance, possibly a loose wire terminal or selection nob.
On a gas appliance, you should hear a hiss and smell the gas and if not lighting, your starter electrode is probably bad, or has a loose wire connection. Make sure the appliance gas supply is turned off and well vented before working on it to troubleshoot.
If you have the make, model number and serial number you should be able to purchase at an appliance repair parts house, or even find it on Amazon, as they seem to have everything, and obtaining more ans more.


Community begins with Aloha

[MarkP]

My oven would get warm but not hot. The temp control was not working right. I took the control board off and sent it to these folks. They fixed it and sent it back:

http://www.fixyourboard.com/

[birdmove]

Michael of Michael's Repair in HPP.

Jon in Keaau/HPP

[terracore]

If it isn't inexpensive to fix it might be time to shop around for a new unit. Some repair costs come close enough to replacement cost it doesn't make sense to fix the old.

[Kenney]

I use the same rule for cars terracore. Once they start eating money, it’s time to replace them, even it it hurts.



Edited to correct spell check.

[bluesboy]

yep, it's important to know what the point of no return is, for anything.

[Kelena]

I'm morally opposed to cooking because I live alone, don't need elaborate meals or a lot of calories and I always think the time spent cooking could be better spent writing, making music, romancing, learning a language, cleaning my house, gardening, or rotating the tires on my car. In addtion, ever since I had a trainer, I like very simple meals and have a fear of calories (I lost 30 pounds after I moved to Hawaii): Smoothies for breakfast; soup (canned) in the afternoon; fruit for snacks; and a microwaved breast of chicken with steamed vegetables for dinner. The only cooking involved is heating up the soup and microwaving the chicken (or chicken substitute sometimes).

It is possible I have an inhibition because as the youngest in my family, I never once prepared a meal of any kind. Then, once out on my own, I quickly exhibited an ineptitude in the kitchen that even to this day comes as a shock to others. Fortunately, for most of my life I had a partner to cook for me. Usually my partner understood very quickly I had no business anywhere near a kitchen. But I am terminally single now.

Others are skeptical and sometimes insist that I cook in front of them while they assist. The pizza burns WHILE THEY ARE WATCHING. It's frustrating for me, because, as in a horror movie, they don't believe until it is too late and the kitchen is about to burst into flames.

I don't know why this is. It just is. I think the other important thing to go know is I have absolutely no interest or inclination to fix this, by taking a class or some such thing. I have no interest in cooking. I would rather do almost anything else. I appreciate the ability of others to cook and love that primal feeling of being nurtured by someone's cooking. I do not get the same feeling of accomplishment when I make an elaborate meal for myself.

I don't keep basic cooking ingredients in my home. Nothing. I just keep mainland lettuce, no calorie dressing, canned green beans, protein power, cashew milk, coffee, tea, sugar and canned soup. There is absolutely nothing in my cupboards. Inexplicably, I'm proud of it.

When someone serves me an elaborate dessert that consists of triple-injected chocolate with candy bits on top, slathered in fresh whipped cream on a layer of cheesecake with mascarpone in the middle, I look at them as if they are insane. Who needs that? It will kill you. Why would you offer such a thing to me?

In short, I am anti-food except as a form of sustenance,or as a way of making others happy, as in taking them to a restaurant. I do sometimes stock boy food in the house just in case. That would be frozen pizza, chimichangas, frozen mozarella sticks, chips, dips, and lots and lots of beer. There has been very little demand for such things lately.

My stove is all-electric. I think the problem has to do with the control panel because you can punch in 400 degrees but nothing else. The element works, although I appreciate the suggestion there. I did check that to make sure. I might not have otherwise.

I appreciate all of the suggestions and might try that control panel place.

I looked at new stoves and I could be wrong, but they appear to have changed dimensions....gotten higher. I have granite countertops surrounding my stove so, not sure how that would be work.

If I cooked, I wouldn't hestitate to figure that last part out. But I don't. I just heat up soup on the stovetop. I never ever put anything in the oven. Not after the pizza fire, supervised by an expert cook.

[Hunt Stoddard]

With all due respect, that's not having a moral problem with cooking; it's a simple preference. Having a moral problem with cooking would be, say, thinking that cooking food is somehow hurting starving people in Africa. Or, say, that the electricity or gas that you're using while cooking is exacerbating global warming. Or that the vegetables that you're chopping and boiling are sentient creatures. Or... well, you get the idea.

You're just not a foodie.