How to Troubleshoot Your Electric Range

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Tim Gipson and I'm going to talk to you about how to troubleshoot a range. Now in this particular set up we have a stove top and an oven microwave unit that they are actually in a separate configuration. So we'll start with this stove top here. This particular is a solid surface stove top that is pretty well low maintenance and there is not much, I mean with these types of stove tops if you have a failure in it unfortunately you have to replace the whole unit. Now the good thing about that is that these typically are not as expensive as a normal entire range. Now if you do happen to have a range top or a stove top that has individual electric elements, you can if you start having problems say with one of the elements what you can do is you can swap the elements and determine that if it is just the element that is bad or if there is something in the connector or the stove itself that is bad. In this case with these types to make sure it is working properly you can turn on the unit. Now with any electrical stove top what you want to do as this comes on and it starts getting red you can look down into the elements. An indicator that you have some problems coming up with your elements is if you have a really bright spot in one of your elements, that is a good indication that that element could be getting bad. The same way with the stove portion you have a lower element and an upper element and these are elements that can be replaced as they go bad. It is very easy to take a couple of set screws out of the back and then you can remove this element and replace it with one that you can get at your home improvement store or at your hardware store. Again to troubleshoot these and to look at these you can turn your oven on to a very high setting and observe your heating elements. Now these will turn bright red as they heat up and what you want to look for is you want to look around your element and see if there is any particular dark spots or if there are any particular bright spots and if you find those, those are an indication that your element is beginning to fail. So I'm Tim Gipson and that is some troubleshooting points for your range."