Electrician help with oven burning the plug socket

At The Gates · 16 Feb 2015 at 18:22

Hi

We got a Rangemaster about 8 months ago and it was all working fine. Recently however when we turn on the electric oven we've noticed a very strong fish smell but couldn't pinpoint anything.

So today we've turned the oven on and the smell is still there, only this time a few wisps of white smoke came out of the plug socket that has the oven isolator switch on. So we immediately turned the oven off, turned it off at the isolator and i have turned off the sockets at the fuse box. The source of the fish smell is definitely that socket.

Does anyone know what might be causing this all of a sudden? A short circuit in the plug socket, is the oven drawing too much power from the socket and it's about to burn it out?

The electrics were done by a qualified electrician and the oven was installed by Rangemaster themselves.

Thanks

At The Gates · 16 Feb 2015 at 20:21

OldCoals said:
Is this a range or a built in oven?

This is a freestanding range cooker. It's wired directly into the wall, the plug socket that smoked has one plug socket on (we never use it) and a red isolator switch which turns the electricity off for the rangecooker.

Thanks

At The Gates · 17 Feb 2015 at 20:28

Hi, thanks for the replies. I had an electrician come round and he checked the socket with the isolator switch on, and said it was burning out the socket as the wire was only 2mm but the oven draws up to 8.6kw which needs a 6mm+ cable. So we'll have to get the oven rewired.

At The Gates · 23 Feb 2015 at 13:37

Hi,

So the cooker is wired directly into a blank plate on the wall (i.e we couldn't remove it without an electrician) so i cant see what it goes to, but the isolator switch for it is above the worktop in a CCU exactly like your first picture, so i would imagine just that? The electrician said the cables coming into the CCU were 2mm (he didn't check the cable from the cooker into the wall itself). The smoke was indeed coming from the unused plug socket next to the switch. I believe he said the socket that was smoking had a 45A fuse for the isolator switch and the plug socket was normal 13A.

What he's suggested is to rewire the cooker using a bigger cable and put it on its own switch and i think on its own MCB on the fuse box. It shouldn't be too bad as we have the original boards which lift up with easy access to the cellar where the fuse box is. I hope!

Thanks