Hi. I'm hoping someone here smarter than myself can help me with my triple stack Thermador in-wall oven not heating. To preface, we've never done the self-cleaning and it was working fine since we moved in (over a year ago) and then all of the sudden the oven stopped heating at all and shows 100F on the display but the element isn't even starting to warm. The loud fan does kick on like it does when the oven is working properly but no heat at all and a constant 100F on the display. The techs and I have tried tricking it to heat by starting with broil cycle but that doesn't work either. Oven will not heat no matter what we try. We've had 5 or 6 techs come to look at it/"fix" it starting with home guard insurance (which was a nightmare) and we're still no closer to having our oven working again.
The first two techs came in a diagnosed as bad relay board and/or relay switch and Thermador no longer makes these parts. I'm pretty sure relay board = control board and relay switch = the bake & broil relays on the control board. After home guard wasted 2 months "waiting for parts", they decided to tell us that our oven is "commercial grade" and not covered by them (laugh out loud), they decided to pay us out maybe 1/5 the cost of a new oven.
At this point, I researched enough to take out the control board and display board and send to a circuit board repair company who tested and said the board is working fine, so they sent it back. I reinstalled and still same issue. So I called a local appliance repair company to come out. When they did I told them that the board has tested good at control board repair company, so he quickly diagnosed it as bad cut-off switch/button. This is a $5 part located in a small panel directly above the lower oven (only oven, not counting the microwave above it). He had my hopes up because he pressed that reset button for 2 seconds and then he started a bake cycle and put his hand in the oven and said it was heating up. However, as we were both looking at the display board and noticing it staying at 100F we felt the element and noticed it wasn't hot/warm at all. He said that it did begin to heat and then it must've cut out, but I don't believe it even began to heat up at all and maybe he just wanted to diagnose it and order the part so he could come back and install it.
He came back the next week and installed the cut-off switch which didn't help. He also connected some wire from the cut-off to some other wire, effectively bypassing this thermal cut-off and that didn't help either. At this point, he took out his voltage wand and started to place near the various relays and cables going into the control board while trying various heating cycles. I witnessed him holding the wand near the bake relay and starting a bake cycle to 400F or something like that, and after starting the bake cycle the wand stayed some color (either green or red) and then after about 4 seconds the color changed to the other color which he told me and I assume means that the relay lost power or failed to deliver voltage from the relay to the heating element. He held the wand near broil relay and started broil cycle and it was a little different. Instead of showing a solid color for several seconds (like it did on bake), it was flickering on one color and continued to do so until we turned the broil cycle off. He said that the broil is getting power but very low power. He said the problem is definitely in the control board and suggested that I send it to one of the two reputable control board repair facilities that his company usually sends boards to as he had never heard of the control board company that I found online and had previously shipped the board to.
I decided to contact the board repair company that I initially shipped to and told them everything from the paragraphs above and they sent me a shipping label to get it back to them for a senior tech to test. I just heard back from them 2 days ago that the board is still testing fine. I believe their standard testing on their test bed is to heat using bake and broil to at least 250F. They've given me the option to pay $120 for preventative maintenance which entails replacing the relays on the board and other component repair/replacement or they can ship the board back to me as-is again.
This is where I dearly need your advice / help! Is there any way that them repairing a board that is already working fine for them will make the oven start working again for me? Should I buy a new element and have someone install it? Or is there something else I should do? Thank you for reading this horror story and for any help you can offer!!
The first two techs came in a diagnosed as bad relay board and/or relay switch and Thermador no longer makes these parts. I'm pretty sure relay board = control board and relay switch = the bake & broil relays on the control board. After home guard wasted 2 months "waiting for parts", they decided to tell us that our oven is "commercial grade" and not covered by them (laugh out loud), they decided to pay us out maybe 1/5 the cost of a new oven.
At this point, I researched enough to take out the control board and display board and send to a circuit board repair company who tested and said the board is working fine, so they sent it back. I reinstalled and still same issue. So I called a local appliance repair company to come out. When they did I told them that the board has tested good at control board repair company, so he quickly diagnosed it as bad cut-off switch/button. This is a $5 part located in a small panel directly above the lower oven (only oven, not counting the microwave above it). He had my hopes up because he pressed that reset button for 2 seconds and then he started a bake cycle and put his hand in the oven and said it was heating up. However, as we were both looking at the display board and noticing it staying at 100F we felt the element and noticed it wasn't hot/warm at all. He said that it did begin to heat and then it must've cut out, but I don't believe it even began to heat up at all and maybe he just wanted to diagnose it and order the part so he could come back and install it.
He came back the next week and installed the cut-off switch which didn't help. He also connected some wire from the cut-off to some other wire, effectively bypassing this thermal cut-off and that didn't help either. At this point, he took out his voltage wand and started to place near the various relays and cables going into the control board while trying various heating cycles. I witnessed him holding the wand near the bake relay and starting a bake cycle to 400F or something like that, and after starting the bake cycle the wand stayed some color (either green or red) and then after about 4 seconds the color changed to the other color which he told me and I assume means that the relay lost power or failed to deliver voltage from the relay to the heating element. He held the wand near broil relay and started broil cycle and it was a little different. Instead of showing a solid color for several seconds (like it did on bake), it was flickering on one color and continued to do so until we turned the broil cycle off. He said that the broil is getting power but very low power. He said the problem is definitely in the control board and suggested that I send it to one of the two reputable control board repair facilities that his company usually sends boards to as he had never heard of the control board company that I found online and had previously shipped the board to.
I decided to contact the board repair company that I initially shipped to and told them everything from the paragraphs above and they sent me a shipping label to get it back to them for a senior tech to test. I just heard back from them 2 days ago that the board is still testing fine. I believe their standard testing on their test bed is to heat using bake and broil to at least 250F. They've given me the option to pay $120 for preventative maintenance which entails replacing the relays on the board and other component repair/replacement or they can ship the board back to me as-is again.
This is where I dearly need your advice / help! Is there any way that them repairing a board that is already working fine for them will make the oven start working again for me? Should I buy a new element and have someone install it? Or is there something else I should do? Thank you for reading this horror story and for any help you can offer!!
via Thermador SMW272YP - not heating, 100F on display
by sevencube
No comments:
Post a Comment