Our old wall oven takes a while to light and then does so with a boom, and it takes a long time to heat up. Here are some numbers:
We open the oven door a little and turn on the oven. It takes 15 seconds for the hiss of the gas to be heard. It takes another 25 seconds for the burner to light. It then takes 21 minutes for the oven to come up to 350 degrees. (Once I left the broiler door open to watch what was going on and after listening to the hissing for more than a minute and beginning to smell gas, I stopped trying to turned off the oven.)
I did replace the ignitor 2 years ago.
What should my next steps be in trying to repair this oven? Thanks for you insights and help.
Nabeel
2 things. 1. If the ignitor is too far away from the burner tube, you will get a boom and inconsistant flame. You can bend the ignitor closer to the tube, and 2nd, if the burner holes where the gas comes through at the ignitor are plugged up, this will also happen, you can get a small piece of wire, or a small pipe cleaner and clean the holes.
Thanks. I will try these things and report back this evening.
See the attached picture of my burner/ignitor.
The burner is a combination of a coarse screen and a finer screen over it. They both look pretty clean. I’ve not removed the gas supply tube from the body of the burner, because there is a gasket between them and I don’t want to damage the gasket without having a replacement in hand. Shining a light down the tube, all I see is wide open space.
The ignitor is firmly attached to the side in a cage that is not very “adjustable”.
What do you think?
Caloric RX212-U0 Burner & Ignitor.jpg (59.4 KB)
Check the resistance of your ignitor, should be between 50 and 150 ohms, if not it is bad
Thanks.
The ignitor resistance measures 220 ohms. I guess that means less current and therefore less “glow”. OK, I’ll buy a new one (I’ll measure its resistance before leaving the store, I suppose.)
Does 21 minutes to come up to 350 degrees seem slow?
Very slow for a gas oven.
Excuse the naive question, but can a new ignitor shorten that time? I assume that somehow not enough gas is being released. (It’s rated for 16000 BTU).
How it works is this. You program to bake, the ignitor comes on, and when the current draw on the ignitor reaches 3.2 amps it opens the gas valve to let in gas. A good ignitor maintains an amp draw of 3.2 to 3.7 amps during bake, now if the ignitor drops lets say to 3.1 amps the gas valve shuts off until the ignitor reaches 3.2 amps. So in your case, the ignitor is barely able to maintain the amp draw needed to keep the valve open, so the flame goes on and off thus your long preheat time. This will also cause the boom you are noticing, by unburned gas pooling in the oven. Hope this helps clear it up a bit for you.
Thank you very much. It really helps to understand what is going on.
Just to follow-up, I installed a new ignitor. Its resistance is 110 ohms. The oven lighted immediately after I heared the gas start to hiss. In other words, the “boom” problem is solved.
It took 20 minutes to warm up to 350 though which is slightly better than it was but not by much. I guess we’ll live with that.
Thank you very much for your help.
15-20 minutes really is ok for a preheat. Glad to help
