Out of Time

We are fortunate to have space in our kitchen for a range style cooker as shown above. It is not the best quality product but it does the job and is invaluable when having people round for dinner (especially Christmas) and extra oven space is required. It was included in the purchase of the house ten years ago so we don't really know how old it is but I would guess at another two or three years prior to us owning it.

We have never had any problems with it until this week when the ovens have failed to light consistently; they were prepared to light some of the time but not all of the time and it was a problem when some of the time was the time that we needed to cook in them (when I say we, I really mean Cath as I don't exactly pull my weight in the cooking department).

We made enquiries with a variety of people who were described as working in the field appliance maintenance and none of them would repair gas cookers, some being prepared to declare that most people don't repair nowadays, they just replace it. Well, at somewhere in the region of £1500-£2000 for a replacement, this was not really an option at this time, given our recent expenditure on central heating replacement, garden fence and lounge refurbishment. Part of the reason that they don't repair gas cookers is that they need a qualification that costs £1000 and that requires a lot of repair jobs to get a margin big enough to cover the cost.

So to the internet, and Mrs W found a web forum where people could give each other guidance on how to repair things, including the Leisure Rangemaster 110 and would you believe it, there were reports of an identical problem, with ovens working erratically and subsequently failing altogether. At the time, our ovens had not given up the ghost completely but they did yesterday and I had already suspected the root cause of the problem but didn't have a solution.

All this is a long-winded background story to get to the fact that the source of the problem was the clock. The humble little clock that glows the time day in and day out (previously blipped on 17th August) but that holds more power than you can imagine as it is the same device that allows you to set the timer for the ovens to come on when you are out so that cooking finishes at a predetermined time; or that will cook for a pre-determined duration after which the ovens will switch off. Basically, it is in control of the ovens despite the fact that we have never made use of its functionality other than to display the time of day and to set a timer for the beeper to alert us to the fact that we need to do something.

The forum contributors (www.howtomendit.com) described a solution that had been successful for all so I set about doing the same following breakfast. They suggested that it should take about an hour, with some taking two hours and in the end I reckon I was finished in an hour and a half. The reason for all that time is basically that you have to shift this beast away from the wall and pretty much dismantle it to get at the back of the clock, where two particular wires need to be disconnected from the clock unit and connected together. In essence, this bypasses the clock and in doing so decommissions it so that now it does absolutely nothing but that includes the fact that it doesn't stop us from using the ovens any more. Having done all this, I am seriously thinking of taking up bomb disposal as a hobby.

So an hour and a half of work has saved £1500 minimum today by the look of it and the only loss is the cooker clock and timer. Who would have thought of them as being so valuable? I was originally going to entitle this "The Day That Time Stood Still" but while doing this write-up have 9/11 memorials in the background and thought that, although ironic, it would have sounded more than a touch crass.

This image was taken on my Canon 400D SLR and, for the second day in a row, I am really unhappy at the sharpness of the image and have concluded that my camera might have a problem. So onto the internet methinks to see if this is a common issue with this camera as it might just be the kit lens that came with the camera that is the issue rather than the camera.