My New Stove

[ea56]

Yesterday marked 5 weeks since I got my new GE JB625DKWW electric stove delivered and installed. I’ve put it through its paces every day since then and I’m happy to say the it has met or exceeded my expectations in every way.

First of all its so easy to keep the ceramic cook top clean and shiny. I can easily wipe up spills and splatters. Everyday after I’ve washed the dinner dishes I take a dish cloth and hot soapy water and wipe it down, then apply a little Weiman Glass Top Cleaner & Polish and buff it to a shine.

The oven bakes evenly and holds true temperatures. Of course I haven’t needed to try the Self Cleaning function yet, but I’m sure it will work just fine.

The ceramic cooktop was very easy to adjust too. The smaller burners have a lower wattage (1200 vs 1600) than my old coil top stove so it does take about 1-2 mins longer to boil 2-3 quarts of water, which isn’t a problem. I really like how evenly these radiant burners heat and how nicely they hold really low temp settings to prevent boil overs and scorching. I’ve learned to turn off the burners close to the end of cooking times in order to take advantage of the residual heat. This also is useful for keeping things warm just before serving.

I’ve used the time bake function of the oven once and it was easy to set and worked just as its supposed to.

And the stove doesn’t get hot as hell when the oven is on!

All in all I’m happy that I chose this electric stove. I’m looking forward to many years of service from it. And NO MORE oven cleaning!

Eddie
[this post was last edited: 2/26/2022-16:46]

https://www.geappliances.com/appliance/GE-30-Free-Standing-Electric-Range-JB625DKWW

 

[joeekaitis]

Smoothtops are a gift from Cooking Heaven.

 

No nooks and crannies for cooking debris to fall into.  And when it cools off, a damp dishcloth is all you need for daily light duty cleaning.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

Beautiful stove Eddie, congratulations. I wish my Caloric was easy to clean.

 

[appnut]

Congratulations Eddie. Very happy for you!!! Somehow I missed you expressing you were looking at getting a new range.

 

[ea56]

Bob, I posted last month on thread 88444 that I bought a new stove.

Eddie

 

[fan-of-fans]

Nice range! I for some reason think GE's are the best looking new ranges for the most part.

I would be careful with using the self clean too often, not sure on these, but on some ranges, people have had issues with the circuit boards getting "cooked" with the high heat from self clean cycle.

That said, I too would buy a self cleaning oven range whether I used the clean cycle or not, because as you said, they put off less heat, because self cleaning ovens are insulated better than manual clean ones.

 

[appnut]

Eddie, I sheepishly say that I didn't peruse that thread any further after your initial apparent success of the old stove functioning fine again. And, I'm extremely excited for you.

 

[ea56]

Re: Reply#5

Cole,
I think that the self Cleaning ovens that end up with fried circuit boards from the self cleaning cycles are those with the controls over the oven door.

I had a Maytag slide in stove 22 years ago with the controls over the door and thats what happened to that stove. One morning about a week after I’d cleaned the oven with the self cleaning cycle I was making some waffles and tried to set the oven to 250 F to keep the waffles warm while I finished making the rest of the batch. As soon as I pressed start the read out threw an F3 code and that oven never worked again.

It was going to cost over $400.00 to repair it and I only paid $600.00 for the stove in the first place. It was only 3or 4 months out of warranty and Maytag wasn’t going to repair it for free. So I got rid of it and bought a Kenmore for $497.00 with the controls on the back like my new GE. I was told at the time that the heat rising through the seal on the oven door is what fries the circuit boards. So I’m hoping that this one won’t have that problem.

Eddie

 

[kevin313]

So glad you are enjoying your new range, Eddie!

Many years of happy cooking and easy cleaning!!

 

[foraloysius]

Congratulations on your new stove. I love that big oven, it's more than twice the size of a normal oven here. Your 5.3 cu ft oven is 150 liters. Freestanding stoves here have an oven between 55 and 73 liters AFAIK.

Happy cooking and baking!

 

[ea56]

Update on Self Cleaning Oven

Today it was warm enough to open all the windows in the house so I decided to run a self cleaning cycle. My new stove is just a few days under 4 mo old and I thought that it would be a good time to self clean the oven. I used the min 3 hour time since it wasn’t real dirty.

Boy did it ever do a good job! I’m so pleased and glad that I decided to get a stove with a self cleaning oven. Since it was the first cleaning cycle there was a little smoke for about the first 45 mins, but it wasn’t visible, I could smell it though. With the windows all open the odor went away quickly. At the end of the 3 hrs. the oven had already cooled enough to open it and all that was left of the burned on grease was a little white ash that was easily wiped off.

I’ll never go back to a manual cleaning oven again! I’m a believer now!

Eddie

 

[henene4]

Self clean is the way to go

After I had my first self clean oven, I started to try and convince people to never buy an oven without true high temp self cleaning.

No matter how much work you put in, getting an oven that clean by hand is basically impossible.

Over here, energy usage is a concern.

Self clean cycles here tend to use between 2 and 7kWh.
That's between 0.60€ and 2.10€ in energy.
Which is a lot, but a good oven cleaner is 1.50€ per clean aswell, so it's not terrible.

I found timing to be more a matter of age of soiling than amount.
If stuff is burned over a year you want to go longer. If it's just a few months shorter times are sufficient.

My Miele has 3 settings at about 2:30, 3:00 and 3:30 with each including cool down times so the door unlocks right when it's done.

I found smell to be highly dependent on oven.
My AEG had a catalytic converter that worked ok. The Mieles catalytic converter lets no smell out at all.

A friends Bosch oven has no catalytic converter and that stinks up the whole house.

I also found that since the oven lets out a lot of heat, even medium temps are sufficient to keep the kitchen ok with a window cracked open.
Though I do tend to schedule cleanings in months March/April and September/Oktober.
And to be honest, when I run it, I usually set it right when I am done cooking to take advantage of the already hot oven. So I usually don't have to spend much time in the kitchen until the self clean is done which makes smell less of a concern for me.

My Miele has a self clean safe oven rack and telescopic runners.
Really nice to to have to take those out.

Though I found the need to clean the oven door glass before starting the cycle.
Usually, wiping with soapy water, going over it with a scraper and wiping again is sufficient.

Ceramic cook tops are great.
I tend to just wipe them with a soapy cloth and towel dry.
Once a week or so I use the cleaning product I got from my brother and finish up with glass top polish.

Even after several years of use they still look great from a glance.
However, over time, you will get fine scratches. But you don't notice them until you get like within a foot or two of the surface.

They do take longer to heat though - but they keep a lot of residual heat in return.
And getting the right simmer setting takes a few tries to work out, but once you get used to it, you can take them really low.

 

[ea56]

Henrick I’ve come to love the ceramic top on my new stove too, and for all the reasons you stated above.

The low heat control is excellent, perfect for steaming rice. And I’ve come to being able to accurately estimate the residual heat and find that stovetop cooking is effortless.

And keeping the stove top clean is super easy too. I use Weimans Stove Top Cleaner once or twice a week, depending upon what I’ve been cooking. Glad I switched from coil top. Plus its good for someone my age to change it up once in a while to keep sharp minded, LOL.

Eddie

 

[qsd-dan]

I've always been hesitant using the self cleaning feature with todays delicate, arguably cheaply made, modern day electronics being sensitive to heat and moisture. I'd use it on a vintage GE P7 from the 60's, 70, and 80's with nary a worry.

 

[henene4]

Electronic design specs

Read somewhere that depending on manufacturer, the controls are designed to survive between 20 and 100 self clean cycles.

That would be between 5 and 25 years with 4 self cleans a year.

Often the failures are aging safety fuses or capacitors.

I guess there isn't much one can do.
Make sure ventilation is sufficient, only run as long as needed and as rarely as possible, don't use any appliance in the same cabinet/ the cooktop etc.

 

[combo52]

Pyrolytic self cleaning oven’s

Hi Eddie glad you love your new stove, there are very few failures and service problems on a stove like yours these days.

The self cleaning cycle does not put much of a stress on the circuit board, other than a bunch of problems with Maytag/magic chef ranges back in the 80s and 90s were their controls would fail during the self clean cycle I have almost never heard of a control going bad during a self clean cycle.

I would guess that any self cleaning oven could easily sustain more than 100 self clean cycles with no damage to controls.

I would still use the feature only as necessary it cleans just as well no matter how long the soil has been there whether it’s been there for five years or three weeks it’s gonna burn off just the same.

We’ve cleaned hundreds of self cleaning ovens at our shop during reconditioning of ranges for resale, we often find ovens where the feature has never been used it still works just as well .

The cost of running a self cleaning electric oven in the US is usually around $.50 for a full cycle you can figure about 3 kW of power consumed.

A gas self cleaning oven will clean for about half as much in the US typically if operated on natural gas, and operated on LP gas it’s about the same as electric around $.50.

I find if there are areas that don’t get clean increasing the time usually doesn’t make any difference many oven designs have areas that don’t get quite hot enough to clean thoroughly such as the window if it doesn’t get clean in three hours it won’t get clean in four hours etc. .

If you find there are spots that don’t clean in your oven you can clean them first if you’d like or you can just clean them up afterwards doesn’t make that much difference.

John L

 

[ea56]

Thanks John for the confirmation that the newer SC oven control boards hold up better than the ones for the 80’s and 90’s. The bad experience I had with a SC oven control board going out was in fact with a ‘99 Maytag electric slide in stove with the controls over the oven door.

I did notice yesterday that the control panel area got pretty hot during the SC cycle. But I’m confident that this stove will hold up for several years. It seems to be well built. As far as the cost of a SC cycle, if it uses 3 KWH then in tier 1 here it would be $ 0.93 and in tier 2 $1.17, still not that much for the convenience.

Eddie

 

[DADoES]

 
Non-electronic controls don't provide a 100% avoidance of failure during self-clean.  Granny had a gas Whirlpool with mechanical controls.  She baked a lot of pastries but not much of anything that caused grease splatters so the oven stayed reasonably clean.  It was some years until I decided to run a self-clean cycle.  The tip of the thermostat sensor/capillary tube failed.  There's no way to know if it would have failed at some point during normal baking temperatures but I imagine the high temp of self-clean was a factor in failing at that point.