Wherein my stove tries to MURDER ME!!!!

[Dave1982]

AND tried to burn down the apartment to hide the evidence!!

Luckily, it failed. I'm fine and there was no fire.

So let me explain. About an hour and a half ago I was cooking a late dinner for me and my fiancé. I had a saucepan of fresh carrots gently boiling away on medium heat on the right-rear "burner" (this is an electric stove). I had just set a skillet on the right-front burner and started heating up some oil in it when, abruptly and with no warning whatsoever, the right-rear burner shorted-out and EXPLODED, sending a massive geyser of sparks flying in all directions!!!

Man did I screech like a banshee when that happened. I quickly grabbed the saucepan off the burner and shut it off, staring at the smoking ruins of the burner element.

It took me several seconds to realize that 1) I'd mistakenly shut the front burner off (I quickly corrected that error!) 2) the burner had actually BLOWN A HOLE clear through the bottom of the saucepan, which was now pissing water all over the floor and 3) my fiancé had come running down the stairs and was standing next to me asking if I was OK and what the fuck happened.

I put the pot in the sink and stood watching the stove area for a couple minutes to make sure none of the sparks had started a fire. Very fortunately there was no fire, though yes, we do keep a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.

Holy fucking shit Batman, that was one of the most frightening things to happen to me in many a moon!

My fiancé told me she had been a split second away from dialing 911.

We're going to be calling the landlord in the morning. On the plus side, dinner was excellent. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy made from scratch. The carrots were ruined (the pot was filled with burnt metal shards) but I threw some frozen peas in the microwave.

[KuariKaydrith]

I'm glad you're okay! That is truly scary...I had no idea that burners could do that and it almost makes me leery of using my own stove now.

[Dave1982]

I googled it. apparently it's not that uncommon a failure mode for these types of burners. What happens it that the inner core of the element ends up touching the outer casing, which causes a catastrophic short and it blows up.

I've never liked electric stoves, and this is yet another reason to not like them!

[Teefies2]

Chicken fried steak, mashed potatos, & gravy .... my favorite meal of ALL time. Sorry that happened to you!

[fireheart]

*quietly looks over at her electric/ceramic cooktop* Don't hurt me.....

[lordlundar]

It's not an uncommon failure though it's usually seen with oven elements. You have to remember that those designs are very high resistance conductive coils, like a lightbulb but more heat than light. The big concern is if this didn't cause a short elsewhere in the current that can cause problems. If that's the case it can cause the element's controls to go out of whack and cause it to max out how much electricity it's putting through regardless of setting. It happened to my parents (though that was a nearby lightning strike that caused it) and they had to get it replaced.

*quietly looks over at her electric/ceramic cooktop* Don't hurt me.....

Ceramic glass cooktops are a little safer in this regard as the element is differently designed and a failure like that is mostly distributed by the glass, resulting in it cracking all over the place. The drawback is the entire cooktop needs to be replaced in that event.

I've never liked electric stoves, and this is yet another reason to not like them!

Every cooktop has it's drawbacks. Electric has it's exploding elements, ceramic glass is extremely vulnerable to thermal shock, halogen has a similar issue plus it's ridiculously expensive to replace a bulb, induction requires particular cooking vessels for it to even work...

[purple]

Glad you are okay, also upside to renting at least the landlord has to deal with it.

These where always my favorite type of element, maybe not so much anymore.

[Chromatix]

Every cooktop has it's drawbacks. Electric has it's exploding elements, ceramic glass is extremely vulnerable to thermal shock, halogen has a similar issue plus it's ridiculously expensive to replace a bulb, induction requires particular cooking vessels for it to even work...

Those are all different types of electric stove, though. To be more thorough, you should cover gas (where it's vitally important not to leave the valve open while it's unlit, or it could literally blow your whole house up) and traditional stoves (where you can't vary the temperature quickly at all).

[Android Kaeli]

frozen peas in the microwave.

Careful, now, you may give the microwave some ideas.

[Dave1982]

I called the landlord this morning and left a voicemail explaining what had happened. He called back and was very relieved that we were unhurt and that the only thing lost in the accident (other than the burner element itself) was a saucepan.

I gave him the make and model of the stove and the burner size. He's going to pick up a replacement burner and get it fixed ASAP.

My main beef with electric stoves is that they simply don't have the instantaneous response of gas stoves. With gas, say something is starting to boil over, you just turn the flame down and presto, it stops boiling over. On an electric range you may have to remove the pot from the burner until the element cools sufficiently, which is easier said than done if you've got all the other burners in use. That and you're totally screwed in a power failure, whereas most gas stoves can be lit with a match if need be.

[Kittish]

My own personal preference is for gas or propane ovens and cooktops with electronic ignitions (no pilot light to mess with). I currently have an electric stove much like the one that tried to kill Dave1982. I had no idea the stovetop elements could fail in such a way. Glad that no one was hurt.

[Gilhelmi]

I feel the same way about gas vs electric.

I like cooking with gas stoves more, you can control the heat better and quicker, you do not need a generator to run the thing in a power outage (or have the pain in the neck set up to do so, our kitchen is in the middle of our house now. Makes the generator set-up "interesting").

I am also glad your landlord is responding to you so quickly. That really makes renting nicer.

[KuariKaydrith]

I have only once lived in a place with a gas stove and I miss it so much! At first it scared the shit out of me because I was always worried about the pilot light going out. But then I learned how handy it was in the event of a power outage, and the few times the pilot light did go out I made sure to vent the area before using a barbecue lighter to relight it.

Where I live now I don't think gas stoves are all that common in rental units so I may have to wait until I can afford to buy my own place. Oh well, such is life. In the meantime I will hope that none of my burners give me a heart attack! And at least with this stove all the burners work so there is some bright side

[XCashier]

I've never heard of an electric stove element doing that. That's scary!

I usually prefer electric to gas, simply for the safety issue (i.e., gas leakage). I guess nothing is truly safe.

[Dave1982]

Then and lord stopped by last night with a new burner element. Unfortunately, despite the packaging claiming itd work with our stove, the wiring was different and it couldn't be hooked up.

He is going to try to find the right type of element and failing that will have a repairman come out to take care of rewiring that element.