Oven Repair in Newtown, Richboro & Southampton

In an electric oven, a bake element sits under the oven floor or exposed along the bottom, and a broil element runs across the top. During preheat, many ovens use both, then settle on the bake element to hold temperature. An electric element fails in a fairly obvious way: it may blister, crack or show a bright spot, then go dark.

In a gas oven, a bake burner under the floor and often a broil burner at the top are lit by a hot-surface igniter. The igniter has two jobs. It glows to light the gas, and its current also tells the safety valve when it is hot enough to open. As igniters weaken with age, they still glow but no longer draw enough current to open the valve, so the oven takes forever to light, or never does.

Convection ovens add a fan at the back wall, often with its own heating element ring, to circulate hot air. A convection fan that has stopped turning will still let the oven heat, but baking becomes uneven and the convection setting runs hotter or slower than expected.

Broiling deserves its own mention. An electric broil element runs at full power with the door closed or slightly ajar, depending on the model, and a broil element that has failed often shows no sign until someone tries to brown a casserole. In a gas oven, the broil burner may sit in a drawer below the cavity or along the top of the cavity itself, and it has its own igniter and valve circuit, so bake can work perfectly while broil does not.