Oven Cleaning - Training - Business - Franchise -

SMEG Oven Light Bulb Replacement

Image by allerleirau via Flickr

Oven cleaning can have its little problems. We sometimes find it difficult to remove the glass bulb covers on ovens and especially on SMEG oven and ranges and Britannia ranges. This is because they tend to be right at the back of the oven, are small in size, so are difficult to get hold of, and also they can get totally covered in burnt on carbon. If I can't get them off by just using my hand I now try with a towel or microfibre cloth and also some stuff I bought at Ikea which is designed to stop your carpet or rug from slipping. With this stuff you can get a very good grip on the cover.  Once off we usually dip the cover in our solution in the dip tank in our oven cleaning van. To get the bulb out can be tricky too. Sometimes we have to break the bulb and then use pliers (make sure the electricity to the cooker is OFF) to unscrew the bulb. Once out we then put in a replacement. You need to make sure that the bulb you put in is the right size for the cover. That is: will the cover go back on over the bulb? A lot of the bulbs you buy will be too big for the cover. We use special small bulbs.

The Glass is Loose in My Oven Door

We have noticed that sometimes the inside glass on the doors of certain makes of oven comes away from its fixings. That is the glass either comes off a bit and rattles when you open and close the door or the glass comes out completely. Sometimes the glass falls out when we clean it  but not often as we look out for the problem now and can clean around it. In the five years that we have been operating we have cleaned in the region of 6,000 ovens and we have done this fix about 5 times. So not a common problem. If your oven is in warranty or you have taken out an extended warranty don't touch the oven and call them out.

So the method of fixing an oven door when its glass has either fallen out or become loose. (please note this is for glass that was originally fixed in place with sealant at the factory and doesn't apply to doors that use screws or other fixings to keep the inner glass in place).

1. Take the door off and then take it apart - it should break into two parts. You will have to remove a few screws to do this. Beware it the oven is a Zanussi, AEG or Electrolux as the lugs maybe plastic and you will have to be very careful  - see my earlier posting on 'Lugs'.

2. Remove the glass  (if it has not already fallen off) and clean it until it is spotless.

3. Clean the door so that the place where the glass will fix back into, that is the groove where the glass will sit, is perfectly clean and the enamel is shiny.

3. Take some silicone sealant (we use grey sealant that looks good when it sets) and put it around the groove in the door. Put the piece of clean glass and put it in position on the sealant and in its groove.

4. Put to one side and take a large book such as a phone directory or other heavy object and put onto the glass so that it is pushing the door down onto the sealant. Leave it like this for 24 hours for the sealant to set.

5. Clean off the excess sealant and then put the door back together and refit.

If the glass has just started to come off, so there is just a small bit coming away, you may find that putting some super glue on the glass and pressing it back together will to the job.

Zanussi Door Broken - How to Fix Them

If the plastic lugs have broken off on your Zanussi oven (may apply to your AEG or Electrolux Ovens too) when you have tried to take the door apart here is how to fix them:

Method 1:

You drill a small hole into the plastic bracket on the outside door where the lug has broken off. I use a 2mm drill bit. Then screw in a small screw to fit the hole. So a 2.2mm self tapping screw. You have now created a new lug and the door will go back together. This takes about 5 minutes with the right tools.

Method 2.

You put the door back together and then you drill up from the bottom of the door through the lugs. You can use a larger drill bit this time and put in large self tapping screws. This creates a solid fix on the door. I haven't done this method myself but it too will only be a 5 minute job with the right tools.

Zanussi Double Oven Lugs Broken Off

If you have a go at cleaning a Zanussi single or double oven yourself be careful of the lugs when you take the door apart.  Zanussi means also AEG and Electrolux too as they are often are the same (or very similar) cookers/ovens with different branding.

So procedure for taking a Zanussi door apart so that you can clean the inside of the door:
1. Remove screws so that the outer door is no longer fixed to the inner door.
2. Now carefully lift the outer door up so that the lugs on the bottom of the door come out of the holes they are located in and are free of them BEFORE you pull the doors apart.
3. Putting back is the reverse of this.

if you don't lift the outer door clear of the locating holes at the bottom before pulling the doors apart the lugs will break off as they are plastic (sometimes they are metal which of course doesn't cause a problem). This means that the doors won't go back together! You will have to get the oven door repaired. See my next post to see how we fix them.

Replacement Oven Parts Fast Delivered by Zanussi

I cleaned a Zanussi oven last Saturday. The client had just had her kitchen completely refitted so everything looked new and sparkling except for the Zanussi Double Oven. Well an hour and half later and the oven fitted in with the rest of the kitchen looking sparkling and new.

The client told me that the builder whilst refurbishing the kitchen had accidentally put a plank of wood through the door of the grill compartment of the oven and smashed the glass door. She ordered a new one from Zanussi (see Zanussi parts and it arrived the next day (at a cost of £70 for just the glass bit of the smaller compartment door - yes oven parts are expensive!). This to me is absolutely fabulous service from Zanussi as the companies I use tend to take several weeks to deliver and often they send the wrong part!

Commerical Oven Cleaning - Check it's working before Cleaning!

We cleaned a commercial range for a Cafe in Weston Super Mare recently. The cafe had just been taken over by a new owner. We tend to get lots of commercial cleans from new owners as they can't believe how dirty the oven etc have been left by the previous owner.

Alan went and cleaned and it a tremendous job but when we got the cheque from the owner he wrote a letter with it to say that he 'was somewhat peeved by the fact that there was a notice on the front of the range cooker saying 'DO NOT USE' and that he had wasted his money. This is strange to me as most domestic ovens only cost at the max £100 to fix.

On speaking to Alan he said that he had seen the small sticky note but it was greasy and the writing had run and so it looked like an old note. He had asked one of the people from the cafe there if they knew whether the previous owner had used the range. They replied positively to this saying that yes he had them that he had been using it right up to before handing over the business.

So in all we will be now be making sure that new owners, especially, check everything about their newly acquired commercial cooking apparatus before asking us to clean it. I personally get the owners to show me at the beginning that everything is working before I start. I will make sure that Alan does this in future.

I gave someone a quote this week - they had taken over a pub just outside Yeovil and were in the process of completely refurbishing it - and I told them to check everything out before we cleaned it. As they were waiting on a delivery of LPG which had been delayed they are going to get back to us. Apparently you can't seem to get fast LPG deliveries which is strange to me especially when you run a pub and depend on it for cooking.

The Oven Door Doesn't Shut!

We had a problem with an oven door that wouldn't shut last week. The oven was cleaned by Nigel on the Monday and the main oven door wouldn't close. Nigel didn't notice at the time but the lady called the office and we got him to go back to try and get it to close properly - the door was staying slightly open - but he couldn't get it to close fully. I went to have a look on Saturday and after taking off the door a few times, comparing it with the other oven door on the same cooker, I had just about given up when I spotted that the door was being obstructed by an oven tray. I moved the tray and the door closed! On this particular model of cooker, a Delonghi, it has an oven tray that is designed to be put at the bottom of the main oven and it fits in there very nicely; but if you put it on the side racks of the oven it sticks out just a little. I'll bring this up at our weekly meeting as we need to make sure the Team put the oven trays back into the oven in the right places!