Saturday, October 16, 2010

Last night


I opened the preheating oven the oven to put the first part of dinner in, and saw something I have seen in an oven once before, about twenty years ago. Guess what? This is not really something you want to see happening to your oven element. I decided to go ahead and chance cooking dinner in there and see what happened.

Dinner cooked, and apparently the problem moved along too, which I have to admit to not really expecting. The last time I had an oven element look like that, it flamed up and made a puddle of melted metal in the bottom of the oven. This time it kept sparking its way along the element, around the curves and turns. Yes, I know I should have turned it off and I probably spiked our electrical usage for the month (or more), but I really wanted to eat dinner. I did check on it a couple of times to make sure it wasn't doing anything drastic (and Chan, I promise the fire extinguisher was right there).
Sometimes when I checked it, the element just had a red hot spot, and sometimes it was white hot and sparking like a sparkler.

Which is pretty much what it looks like all cooled off and ready to have a new element installed. We are hoping that Home Depot sells them so that life can be back to baking as normal around here before Tuesday.

6 comments:

  1. First - I'm thankful that your dinner got cooked. Second - I love that you took photos of the element. :) g

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  2. Wow! That's pretty cool (in a kind of destructive way). =)

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  3. you poor thing, using an electric stove. The electric oven is ok. BBS is right on top of things as usual...

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  4. Oh, Barbara. Do you know what your electrician uncle is thinking right now? Your electrician uncle is thinking, among other things, that it is truely wonderful and utterly amazing that he still has a niece.

    What he is thinking about the intelligence of that niece really does not bear exposure in a family journal.

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  5. I can only imagine how traumatic it is for you to have a not-functional oven!! But props for getting photos just the same...

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  6. Oh.My.Goodness.! (While guffawing at your uncle.)

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