We bought this cheap ranger cooker to tide us over in a rental we're desperately trying to get out of. For context we've been through SIX. Two had problems not related to the house, four have had temperature problems*, two of which were secondhand, two of which were not. I've since learned that it's normal for hob rings to turn on and off to regulate heat on ceramic hobs, which is pretty annoying when you have a disability and just need to get things done quickly, so, questions:
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8399469?clickPR=plp:5:7
If you have a look at the Q&A, several of them mention 53A. Idk what that means. My LL had her electrician upgrade the electrics from 13 (?) to 45 whatever after we moved in (she said she'd remove an Aga then point blank refused once she discovered the cost/having to rip floors up - so she paid for him to do it). We bought a secondhand range, I think he fitted it. I asked him if the amps (wattage? See how much this confuses me!) would be enough and he said: yeah it'll be fine, you won't use the whole thing at once very often, and the worst it'll do is trip the fuse. He mentioned 60A (w?) being difficult to install. Idk why.
a) Has he installed electrics that can't actually handle having the oven cavity (or in the case of the first, secondhand rangemaster - 3 cavitites) and all hob rings switched on at once? They're 90cm ranges cookers.
The woman we bought it off was paranoid that we'd get it home and request a refund that she showed us everything working in person. Then it sat in our garage for months until she final got the electrics changed, and the oven was so slow when we finally got it installed that it took me EIGHTEEN HOURS on Xmas Eve to pre-cook our Xmas dinner for x2 people.
b) Is it legitimately NORMAL that when you have two ceramic hob rings turned on at once (with no oven on) that one of them blinkin' turns itself off after five minutes to cool down? I usually have the middle one (the super burny one that has two settings: normal temperature, fast scorchy temperature) and the front right one turned on at once. It still does this no matter which other one I use - and only with two turned on.
This particular cooker cooked fine for a month and I don't recall any problem with it whatsoever, I was over the moon, then suddenly:
Cooking on the bottom shelf became a furnace. Now what happens is: we never know whether it's going to be fast or slow. One day you can pre-heat for 5 minutes and it still takes 40 minutes to cook some oven chips, the next day you can pre-heat it for 5 minutes and they're charred. So,
c) Could dodgy electrics be causing this?
And, finally, the superhot one in the the middle I mentioned - when things started to go wrong, I fried some bacon on that ring one day (because the grill is like a furnace, which someone mentioned in the reviews) and a bit of fat hit this middle ring after I removed it, and
d) it set on FIRE. Is that normal?
Sorry for the wall of text. I'm sick and tired of chucking away money on this house; we don't have good tradesmen around here and most of them know my LL anyway.
If the answer to the above is a resounding 'stop buying cheap crap', I really won't be offended - I would rather just know one way or the other. Because of this ongoing oven debacle we've been living off absolute crap for almost two years, and we only intend to be here another six months because we're buying a house.
"Suck it up then Kiev"
Yeah, if we weren't both displaying symptoms of malnutrition, I might be inclined to do that. My OH is also gluten intolerant, and one of my main motivators for this property was the ability to be able to easily cook good, healthy food in a big oven (big oven because of disability).
*The other three with issues: a pre-installed 50cm that came with the house; took forever to grill, electrics were 13 back then. Then the electrics were upgraded and we had to get rid of the slow, secondhand 90cm range, and we bought our old 60cm in from the garage (which was a year old at this point). Suddenly the grill took 45 minutes to cook sausages. The third was a 90cm range and I think I had similar problems to the above (especially re: hobs turning on and off). We also had a 90cm induction - the problem with that one was that the circles on the hobs were so feint that you literally couldn't see it in our kitchen - I had to hang a torch over them to see them.
Thanks for reading/helping if you got this far.