Warning: Using the self-clean feature on your oven may be hazardous to your health

Dennis wrote:

my neigbors fridgidaire oven caught on fire during selfcleaning, the fire totally destroy their house and my house, do you have any information about any fridgidaire range malfunctioning during self cleaning mode?

Using the self-clean feature on ANY oven or range is just asking for trouble. What happened with your neighbor’s Frigidaire range is one of the worst-case scenarios. More commonly, something just breaks in the oven: door lock motors seize up and won’t unlock the door, shoddily-made (but expensively-priced) electronic range control boards fail from being exposed to high temperature and humidity that they were never designed to withstand, even though they are included in self-cleaning ranges. Idiotic? You betcha! Welcome to the low-budget underworld of appliance manufacturing.

If you spend any time at all reading topics in the Kitchen Forum at the Appliantology Academy, you’ll see warning after warning to never ever ever use self-clean on your oven… unless you just like fixing broken stuff and buying appliance parts, which I have no problem with as long you’re buying your parts here! 8)

As to your specific question about Frigidaire ranges blowing up during self-clean, I don’t know of any repeating pattern of this problem unique to Frigidaire-built ranges. However, as I’ve said, ANY range is vulnerable to this during self-clean. Fun fact to know and tell: oven temperatures can exceed 900F during self-clean. At those temperatures, the volatilized carbon from the food soils would explode on contact if they were to mix with ambient air if, for example, the door was opened during self-clean. It is for this very reason that the door locks during this process. So I’m wondering if the door lock was disabled on this oven or if the door gasket was badly damaged or missing, allowing enough ambient air in to fuel an explosion.

If your oven is broken from using the self-clean or for some other reason, we can help you fix it in the Kitchen Forum. Just create a free account at the Appliantology Academy and start a new topic. We’ll help you whup up on it.

To learn more about your range or oven or to order parts, click here.


 

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