It's great having a fan oven. Not only do fan-assisted appliances cook food faster than traditional ovens, they generally do so at lower temperatures - most cooking instructions nowadays specify one temperature setting for fan ovens and another, higher setting for everyone else (e.g. 200°C / Fan 180°C).
This means:
- Less waiting around for your oven to preheat
- Less energy used up per meal
- Shorter food preparation periods
As we said, it's great to have a fan oven. But just like any appliance, a fan oven can break down, and what good is an oven - fan-assisted or otherwise - that can't cook anything?
Today, we're going to introduce you to some common fan oven repairs to help you get your fan-assisted appliance up and running again. But there's one important question that we ought to answer first:
How does a fan oven work?
A standard electric oven cooks food via a heating element - basically a coil of wire that converts electrical energy into heat, warming up the oven and everything in it.
Fan-assisted ovens rely on heating elements as well, but with one big difference: the fan. The fan in an electric fan oven spins at all times when the oven is in use; this distributes the heat throughout the oven cavity, cooking your food more evenly and more efficiently.
Q: My fan isn't working - can I still use my fan oven like a normal oven?
A: No, unfortunately you can't. Fan-assisted ovens are specifically designed with the heat-distributing effect of the fan in mind. If the fan blades aren't spinning around and spreading the heat generated by your element throughout the whole oven, there's a high risk that the element will overheat and stop working.
For this reason, you should NOT use a fan-assisted oven if the fan is not working. With this in mind, fan oven repairs are something that should be dealt with as soon as possible.
Now that you understand how a fan oven works, let's take a look at some common issues and how to fix them:
1. The fan has stopped working
If the fan in your fan-assisted oven isn't starting up when you switch the appliance on, you may need to replace the fan motor.
Buy a new fan oven motor here >
How to replace your oven fan >
2. The oven isn't heating up
What if your fan is working fine, but there's no heat for it to distribute? If that's the case, you may need a new oven element.
Buy oven elements >
How to replace a fan oven element >
3. Other issues...
There are lots of other things that can go wrong in a fan oven. Perhaps the door seal is broken and you're losing during cooking, or perhaps there's an issue with the power supply and your appliance isn't turning on at all.
No matter what's happened to your fan oven or what sort of repair work it needs, we at Cooker Spare Parts can help! We stock all kinds of replacement components for fan-assisted ovens, and our cooker experts are always on hand to help you work out which part(s) you need to purchase. Follow the link below to ask for advice on any fan oven repairs you may have.
Contact us for expert cooker advice >
