The burners light, the kitchen works, and the oven is stone cold an hour before people arrive. The frustrating part is that everything looks fine. The good news is that the working stovetop has already told you something useful, and it rules out most of what people worry about.
Why a working stovetop matters
The oven and the stovetop are two systems that happen to share a cabinet. On a gas range the surface burners light from a spark igniter, while the oven has its own igniter buried at the back or under the floor. On an electric range the surface elements and the bake element run through different parts of the control circuit.
So when the burners work and the oven doesn’t, you already know the gas is on, the power is on, and the appliance is getting both. The fault is inside the oven half. That is most of the diagnostic work done before anyone touches anything.
First, rule out the settings
This is not condescension. It is the single most common false alarm we get called about, and it costs nothing to check.
Make sure the oven is not in a mode that suppresses heat. Sabbath mode, demo or showroom mode, and a control lock will all leave an oven looking alive and completely cold. If the clock is flashing or was recently reset after a power cut, many ovens will not start a bake cycle until the time is set. And if a delayed start or timed bake is still programmed from last week, the oven is waiting rather than broken. Hold the cancel or clear button for several seconds, set the clock, and try a plain bake at 350.
Gas ovens: watch for the glow
Set the oven to bake and look at the igniter, which on most gas ovens is visible once you lift out the bottom panel. Give it a couple of minutes, and watch what happens.
It glows, then gas lights. The ignition system is working. If it still will not hold temperature, you are looking at the thermostat or sensor instead.
It glows bright orange but no flame ever comes. This is the classic failure and it is worth understanding, because it looks like the part is fine. The igniter has to do two things: get hot enough to light gas, and draw enough electrical current to pull open the safety valve. As it ages it loses current draw before it loses its glow. So it sits there glowing, the valve never opens, and no gas arrives. A glowing igniter with no flame is close to a diagnosis on its own.
Nothing glows at all. The igniter has failed outright, or the power to it has, which can be a fuse or the control board.
Do not try to light a gas oven with a match or a lighter. The safety valve exists precisely to stop gas flowing without ignition, and defeating it is how people fill a kitchen with gas.
Electric ovens: look at the element
With the oven off and cold, look at the bake element, the thick curved bar across the floor of the oven. Then set it to bake and watch for two or three minutes from a safe distance.
A healthy element glows evenly orange along its whole length. A failed one often shows a blister, a split, or a bright scorched spot where it arced, and either glows in patches or not at all. A visible break is conclusive. An element that looks perfect can still be broken internally, so looking fine does not clear it.
If the bake element is dead but the broil element at the top still glows, that confirms power is reaching the oven and narrows it to that one part.
When it heats, but not to the right temperature
This is a different fault and it points somewhere else. If the oven gets hot but everything bakes pale, or burns, or takes half again as long, the heat source is fine and the measurement is wrong. That is the temperature sensor, a thin probe poking into the top corner of the cavity.
Test it with a separate oven thermometer rather than by eye. Set the oven to 350, let it run for twenty minutes, and read the thermometer. Out by less than about twenty degrees is usually correctable with the oven’s own calibration setting, which is in the manual. Out by a lot, or drifting around, and the sensor or the control board needs attention.
What it usually turns out to be
On gas ovens the order is: the igniter first by a wide margin, then the safety valve, then the sensor or control board. On electric ovens it is the bake element first, then the sensor, then the board. Across both, a control board is the least likely and the most expensive, which is exactly why it is worth ruling out the cheap parts properly before anyone suggests one.
Should you keep using it?
If you can smell gas at any point, stop. Turn the gas off at the valve behind or beneath the range, open a window, leave, and call your gas utility before you call anyone else. That is not an appliance repair.
Short of that, an oven that will not heat is safe to leave alone, and the stovetop is fine to keep using. If an electric element has visibly arced, switch the oven off at the breaker until it is replaced. (If the oven isn’t the only thing misbehaving, our list of common appliance problems covers what each symptom usually means.)
Repair or replace?
Usually repair. Igniters, bake elements and temperature sensors are among the cheapest parts on a range, and the expensive parts, the cabinet, the door and the controls, are not involved. The calculation changes on a range well past fifteen years old that has already needed a control board, or a built-in wall oven where the labour to get it out is a real part of the cost. If that sounds like yours, ask us and we’ll give you a straight answer.
What a repair like this costs
With FixAIro there’s a service call fee for a technician to come out and confirm the problem, and it’s waived if you go ahead with the repair. Before the visit we give you a labor range for the repair. Parts are priced separately, and you approve the final price before any work starts. Nothing gets added at the door.
How to get it fixed
Call us and have three things ready: whether the range is gas or electric, the brand and model number (on a plate around the door frame, visible when the door is open), and what you saw in the checks above — whether the igniter glowed, whether the element glowed evenly, whether the broil element still works. From those we can tell you the most likely cause and what it will cost before anyone drives out. Here’s how the whole repair works, from the first call to the finished job.