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I've just found an entry on AGA Central Forum about someone using this company to repair the control board on a 30 Amp AGA.
As I want to make sure I remember it if I have the same problem on my 30 Amp AGA here are the details:
30 Amp AGA Control Board Repair Company RadTronix offer a 3 day turn around of repair of control board for 30 amp AGA. www.radtronix.co.uk with 12 month warranty on repair.
As we have recently taken on another employee here is a list of the top five things that are top of the things that might go wrong because of their inexperience of oven cleaning.
1. When cleaning inside the doors they accidently scrape off the paint - some doors have painted glass inside the door. For example some Zanussi ovens have a painted effect which if you put a scaper anywhere near it it comes off. So do AEG and the doors cost about £80 to replace.
2. When you get the door back on and the customer checks it they say there seems to be a problem with the door. With this it is a case of checking the oven before cleaning it to see if there is an existing problem with the door hinges. For example NEFF ovens hinges are the ones to look out for; you just check it by pushing the top of the door and see if it is already just off the seal, that is when you push the door it goes in a bit, there is 'give' in the door. Also some ovens have what I call a dog leg action and the problem with these is that the closing action of the door seems to stutter. When opening the door it is easy to notice - it is just a case of remembering to point out the problem to the customer before starting as you get bet they will notice it 'for the first time' when you have completed the job. Door hinges sometimes do have this wear and it is from normal useage. The solution is to replace the hinges. The cost is usually about £15 for each hinge and then the fitting time. If the customer mentions when they book in the oven for a clean that there is a problem with the hinge we suggest that they order a new set and we then fit them at no charge when we are cleaning the oven.
3. When they come to put the oven back together there seems to be bits missing but wherever they look, in the oven dipping tank, in the van, on the road, they can't find it however hard they look. There is a 90cm range which has a centre burner, like most 90cm ranges it has 5 burners with the largest in the middle, and when you take these burners apart and then put them back together it is very easy to put the bit that makes up the outer ring of the centre burner onto one of the other burner tops and heigh presto it is competely hidden. So when you come to put the centre burner back together the outer ring is missing. I think I spent an hour looking for this outer ring once taking all the stuff out of the van. In the end the customer found it which was embarrassing. Another cooker where I have had problems with 'missing parts' is a Belling Cuisine range cooker. On this on the right hand oven when you put the self cleaning sides back in if you get them upside down the grill just hangs down. You think there is a missing bit but when you search your tank etc you can't find it. But it's just a case of putting the self cleaning sides back in the other way up. I've spent some time with this problem too. I think it has happened about three times to me over the years. You'd think I'd remember!!
4. When you take the doors apart you can't get them back together. On some ovens, again the Zanussi springs to mind, the doors have plastic lugs on the bits that keep them together and when you take them apart it is very easy to break them off and then the doors don't fix back together. To fix these is a bit more involved. I have found two ways to fix the problem: one - put in 2mm holes and then screw in a self taping screw into the hole to make a new pin which means the door can then go back together: two - put the door back together and then, using larger self taping screws, screw the door parts of the door together.
5. They don't clean it clean enough. Really sometimes, using our method, more elbow grease is required, and when you start there isn't enough strength in your fingers or hands - you quickly get it though. And also blade techinque with the scraper. With a few adjustments the blade can work a whole lot better and you can get a lot of grease and burnt on carbon off that much quicker and better, and it is these techniques I teach on our training. We also offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee to our customers and we just send one of the guys back to clean to the clients satisfaction - it doesn't happen that often though as we only let the guys out on their own once we feel that they are achieving the standard we demand in our business and also that they need to check themselves to make sure that they have cleaned everything.
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If you been reading my posts about my own 30 Amp AGA you will know that back in April we had a problem with one of the elements. Well the engineer actually replaced the fan first as he said that was the problem, but it still didn't work so we had to get them back a few days later. The cost of the AGA repair was over £300 altogether.
Well now just a few months later the same thing has happened, last week. The AGA has gone cold and we called out the AGA engineer from Spillers and they told us that yes it was another element. So after 20 minutes and £159 later (£80 call out fee, £24 for half an hour labour and £59 for new element) the AGA was fixed. We have the older 20 Amp AGA so the elements are in series. If one goes the AGA gets cold. The new AGAs have banks of 6 and 2 x 4 elements in parallel, so if one element goes the AGA will still stay hot. So the cost was for replacing one element.
I asked the engineer if it was anything to do with the control knob as on both occasions we had turned the AGA down (on the 30 amp it has a knob and we put the setting to zero) prior to going away for a long weekend. When we got back we turned the knob back up (up to position 4 or 5) and then it didn't get hot and got colder over the next few days. He said that it was unlikely and was a coincidence. He didn't check the switch.
My wife wasn't there and says she doesn't think it's a coincidence at all. We have decided not to 'turn down' the AGA again if we go away as it is going to put at least another £150 on to the cost of going away for the weekend.
I'm going to find out the method of replacing the elements so that I can do it myself. Well I am a trained electronics technician after all.
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I think I've mentioned before that some of the SMEG single oven ranges have painted bits on the doors inside the oven. This means that if you use a shop bought oven cleaner with caustic in then there is a good chance that it will take off this paint and leave it a horrible white in colour.
We have also noticed that on one particular SMEG 90cm range the racks fall down for no apparent reason. One of our customers complained about a clean we did as they said that the racks in the oven weren't supporting weight at all and were slipping down after we had cleaned their oven. I went to look at it and did a re clean and noticed that this particular SMEG oven did not have the side chromed supporting racks that they normally have. It had ribbed edges into which the racks slid into (like the arrangement on a single oven in the photo here). And yes the racks were pretty useless, they were short by about two millimetres. I thought perhaps the racks had buckled in our oven dip tank, which looking back was a ludicrous thought as the oven works at a temperature of approx 200C and our tank is at approx 60C so if they had buckled they would have buckled in the oven. I tried to straighten one out and it broke which meant I had to order a new one. I only ordered one as I thought the other reason might be that the sides of the ovens had warped. The rack replacement cost was £50 which seemed like a huge sum of money. Anyway when the new rack arrived I went back to the customer and it fitted perfectly so I left it with them to order the other replacement rack. So if someone complains that their racks are slipping down on a SMEG single oven range cooker then the problem is with the cooker in that it has a design defect and to rectify this you need to buy new racks at £50 each from SMEG.
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Last Thursday we cleaned an oven and when one of the two bulbs in the main oven was replaced and the oven switched on the bulb blew and power was lost to the cooker, no lights on timer, none of other bulbs or cooker working. Fuse box checked wasn't tripped. The power light on the cooker lead was on. So power to cooker but cooker not working. The cooker was a Neff U1661 double oven.
I told the client to get a quote for repair as the only other time this has happened to an oven we were cleaning it was fixed with the replacement of a fuse in another plug. But this was different in that the NEFF was connected directly to a cooker switch.
I got back to the office and searched on the net and found the following post on NEFF U1661 No Clock or bottom ovens. The fault was similar to ours but on ours both ovens weren't working.
The customer got a quote for repair from a local company (call out charge for this was £59) and the cost was £289 including £59 calling out fee.
In the meantime I found an appliance repair company called Repair Care who give a fixed price to repair the cooker at £118 which is a totally inclusive price unless the oven is a write off, which I doubt. So in all with this company do the work the cost will be £177 to carry out the repair.
On Monday repair care didn't turn up at the time stated - that is they rang the client to say they'd be there at 1500 but at 1620 still hadn't turned up. The client rang the engineer and in course of the conversation they asked him if he had the new board. To which he replied no and it's not worth me turning up. So he didn't turn up. A quick conversation with Repair Care and they told us we could have a refund. I'll keep you posted.
In all from the other post it looks like these cookers maybe liable to this sort of fault so be careful when you are changing a bulb on a NEFF U1661
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We've had a few problems with our otherwise reliable 30 Amp AGA Cooker. As it has been off (read the rest of our 30 Amp AGA Saga below) John our new operative and I took the opportunity to give a very special clean and now it really does look like new AGA sitting in our kitchen. Tonight it is heating up a treat and also smelling a bit but as it has had new parts today then I think it's just oil burning off them and it will be fine. So we are looking forward to a nice warm kitchen and house again.
We have been having some problems with our 30 Amp AGA cooker for a few weeks now. Our AGA is a reconditioned one that we bought about two and half years ago now. It worked fine up until a few weeks back when we started having problems:
The first thing that went wrong was the timer clock - it started working at double time which meant that it wasn't switching the AGA on at night during off peak electricity time and so the AGA wasn't getting so hot as it normally is and it was heating up in the day time. This is a timer which the AGA guy put into place which switches the AGA on so that it is charging up during the night on office peak electricity. So it's nothing to do with the AGA itself but is a requirement to get it to switch on at the right time as we don't want it charging up in the day time on normal electricity rates. We got an electrician in who said that he couldn't source a new timer; as we've had the plumber in our house replacing our old central heating boiler on the scrappage scheme we asked him and he said that he wouldn't be able to source it either. Then the electrician rang and said that Screwfix sold the exact same timer so I went and bought a new one and fitted it and the AGA was working again.
After a few days of working fine the AGA then went stone cold. So this time we called in an AGA specialist and as we recommend Spillers to our clients they came and had a look at it. As soon as the engineer walked into the kitchen he said "the fan isn't working and thats your problem as you can't hear it". Apparently the core of the AGA (the big solid bit of cast iron) will heat up but to get the heat to the rest of the AGA it needs to be circulated, on the 30 Amp AGA, by a small fan which is on the top under the top covers. They tend to go after a while as they get hot and dusty. So they replaced this fan - the cost of replacement was £80 for the call out fee, £24 for half an hour labour and £105 for the fan so a total of £209. We paid it, they left and then we switched the AGA back on, and yes you could now hear the fan making a whirring noise.
After a couple of days it was still stone cold. So we called out Spillers again. Today they arrived and this time the engineer did some resistance checks and told us that one of the elements had gone and he then replaced it. By the way the element is easily assessible from the front of the AGA you just take off the outer cover and there just under the insulation are all the tops of the elements lined up - the engineer just un-did the nut and slid the element out - they are long and thin and nearly the same as the depth of the AGA, so close to two feet in length. This time Spillers charged us £24 labour (no call out charge) and £55 for the element replacement so a total of £79.
Apparently our 30 Amp AGA is older than I thought as it has 14 elements in series and if one is broken none of the others will work and hence the AGA doesn't heat up. When he had replaced the engineer said "hear that hum that's the sound the AGA should make when all the elements are working and the AGA is heating up". We never really heard this sound before as the AGA normally heats up at night when we are in bed; but we know now.
In about 1998 AGA changed the configuration of the elements so that they now have 14 elements in 3 'banks' of elements. So instead of 14 single elements in series as in mine there are now three banks in parallel, one bank of 4 on the top, one bank of 6 in the middle and one bank of 4 at the bottom. if one of the elements goes wrong in one of these banks then the other two banks will soldier on and still keep the AGA hot and it will still be able to charge up. So if we had had one of these newer AGAs then it would have meant that instead of changing just the element we would have had to change the whole bank. So this means it could have been expensive! The prices for the banks were: for the 6 bank it would have been £213 and for one of the four banks it would have been about £150. So say you had had a problem with the elements on your newer 30 Amp AGA then the cost for Spillers to come out and fix the broken element would be (at 2010 prices) £80 for the call out, £24 for the half an hour labour and £150 for the new bank of 4 elements giving a grand total of £254. Or if the element had gone in the 6 bank then the total price would have been £317. So you can see this could be even more expensive.
But on the other hand this is the first time we have had anyone to look at the AGA as a 30 Amp AGA doesn't need a service like other AGAs so we have saved on servicing costs. If we had had a gas AGA then we would have had it serviced twice and the cost would have been 2 x £125 so £250 total spend. If it had been an oil AGA we would have had it serviced at least four times (I'm not sure on oil AGA servicing costs but its got to be at least £100) so a total spend of at least £400. We have also saved a huge chunk of money on running costs too as our AGA costs us about £11 a week to run. If we had had say a 3 oven 13 Amp AGA cooker the running costs would have been £45 a week (yes the Spillers engineer confirmed this as the most expensive AGA to run) so a total of £34 more each week to run. If we had had an oil AGA then the cost would have been at least £25 a week to run. And the same for the gas powered AGA. Though I was told by a couple of clients, when cleaning their oil AGAs in their barn conversions in the Cotswolds recently , that they had staggering high oil fuel costs this winter.
So two 30 Amp AGA tips I have learnt over the last week - the fan on the top of the AGA makes a noise when it is working. The 30 Amp AGA hums when it is heating up - if it doesn't hum then the elements aren't working properly.
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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.
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