So my oven’s bottom heating element stopped working. Not a big deal, it happens and is easy enough to replace. When I got the new element in, I went to take the old one out, and it turns out a portion had actually partially collapsed and spot welded itself to the bottom of the oven.
An oscillating multi tool took care of that easily enough. (Definitely glad I used a dust mask, hearing protection, and dust goggles, all that fine carbon kicked up was harsh)
So now my question is, did this shorting of the element to the chassis cause any potentially dangerous problems, and how would I verify it’s safe?
No breakers were thrown. The rest of the oven, like the broiler work fine. The contacts for the bottom element and the chassis are not stuck in an energized state (which can apparently sometimes happen with relay failure or whatever is used internally to switch power to the element). Oven model is a roughly 20 year old Frigidaire No.FEF352FSA
Doing my own research, but wanted to know if anyone more knowledgable here has a hot take on the situation.
The breaker didn’t trip, if it had the rest of it would not have remained functional. Problem is, reading online there are many instances of more serious/complex oven failures that the breaker box just didn’t do a damn thing for. The combination of differing oven ages/designs (and thus safety features) and how a house is actually wired makes trying to determine what warning signs to look for, nontrivial.
I think the oven itself may have “detected” (either by controller or design failsafe) something was wrong itself, and either shut off the element the prior time I used it successfully (and didn’t notice something was wrong), or during my attempt to preheat it only to find it cold a bit later. But there are no error codes, may be too old for that to have been a thing yet.
I’m likely going to call/email Frigidaire support. Once I have more context, I’ll pass that to the landlord, and he’ll be the one to ultimately decide how to proceed.
In comparison, the recent replacement I did of the pilot assembly for my water heater when the temperature probe failed, was actually quite intuitive and straightforward after the initial exposure to the troubleshooting flow. Funny how explosive gas makes me far more confident than 240V/20A.
Is there a schematic sticker on the back/side you can check?
Wait, do they still even exist? Maybe someone would have bought them out? Wow they these guys still exist. I mean their brand was literally synonymous with refrigerators the same way Google is to search.
