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Oven buying HOW???

Slightly Kwackers

I want an oven, I want one quick to heat, efficient and one I can plug into a socket or wire to a 13A fused spur.

What the Hell do the coloured bands mean? Once we had power and a bit short on the rest of the info but that was it.

Amazon do at least give direct Wattage for those I looked up, but strangely those that are rated at 3kW do not list a 13A plug as an option, they require "wiring in".

Now am I missing something, my gas oven takes over an hour to heat the internals of a Dutch Oven to 200C, the jets are clean and working so I assume the delay is down to inefficiency as the kitchen warms up nicely.

I see nothing in the new figures I can understand. An oven is a resistor in a box basically, so surely the best oven would be insulated well and as powerful as possible?

So when I see a grill/ oven rated at 1.5KW I know full well that the thing will be useless and whatever insulation would be able to stand the heat would lose so much energy that it would end up costing far more to run that a 3KW unit.

The microwave has a 1kW grill and it's neither use nor ornament and Watts's is Watt's are they not? The top certainly won't keep the tea warm when grilling, or the ventilated air hot either.

Surely its a basic type of question to know what the power rating of an appliance is, the time to get to the working and maximum temperature and what the maximum temperature is?

Has anyone any tips on oven buying, or can they tell me why a manufacturer of a 3kW oven states it must be hardwired?

Why don't the manufacturers give the single most important parameter which is the wattage of each element? Even downloading a spec does not provide this information on many occasions.

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ongarite

Powercity ovens that can be plugged into 13A socket

https://www.powercity.ie/groups/45/40?dimensions%5Bmin_height%5D=0&dimensions%5Bmax_height%5D=5950&dimensions%5Bmin_width%5D=0&dimensions%5Bmax_width%5D=596&dimensions%5Bmin_depth%5D=0&dimensions%5Bmax_depth%5D=609&featureList=3%20PIN%20PLUG-YES

Oven over 3kW needs dedicated hardwire due to simple electrical maths. 13A x 230V = 3kW.

Oven that needs heavier gauge copper cable hardwired to consumer fuse board.

who what when

Don't mean to hijack this thread but does anyone know where one can find a simple explainer on all the different electrical measurement units. Like how on earth can amps x volts = kilowatts?

It's like litres x centimeters = tonnes. This has puzzled me for years

The Red Ace

nearly all single compartment fan ovens use a single element of 1800 watts assisted by a fan motor to distribute the heat evenly, the difference between cheapies and dearer ovens is insulation and better fan motors , some ovens use motors not much bigger than match boxes.multifunction ovens have extra elements for cooking or keeping food hot but not fan assisted . All of these can only be used individually. All good working ovens rise in temperature at approximately 15 degrees per minute, try checking with a watch and thermometer simultaneously.

Slightly Kwackers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121987346#Comment_121987346

Thanks, but why do 3kW have to be hard wired?

Curry's do one that "must be hardwired into a 13A fused spur" according to their blurb. Now my microwave is programmable and has a real time clock, so surely the only other reason for a maintained power source is to avoid appliance testing?

The other point about going for max kW is that I don't really think efficiency is too important in my kitchen. The oven is virtually idle in summer and I much prefer a rapid warm up even if a little of the heat is lost to the room.

So basically the best I have found is a 2.4 kW Candy and as I found when I put a thermocouple into my Dutch Oven the oven preheat times quoted by cooks can be a tad short on the ideal, another 600 W would I'm sure cut the wait time down as the oven pumps out heat yet cooks damn all for an hour.

Lost isn't an appropriate word though, because the heat escaping reduces the energy input that goes into warming the room

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121987370#Comment_121987370

Amps x volts = Watts.

13A x 230V = 2990W or 3kW rounding up.

TheChizler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121987370#Comment_121987370

Current is Coulombs (unit of charge) per second so A = C/s

Volts are Joules (unit of energy) per Coulomb so V = J/C

A x V = C/s x J/C = J/s

Watts are Joules per second, so A x V = W

Mech1

https://youtu.be/s2P6qAKilrU?si=AE7_eIlMHsnopIja

Now your sorted!

Slightly Kwackers

Well start with Ohm who simply states that current through a resistance is proportional to the Voltage, although it may be Voltage across a resistor being proportional to current.

Power isn't strictly speaking electrical, it can be produced from gas, coal or horses :-). If you look up W = I^2 R and get to grips with how that is developed it should provide a nice mathematically convenient answer.

With your second point, you are again tying a different parameter into a "volume"?

Mass can only be represented directly as an equivalent to volume if it's pure water or something of equal SG.

1 litre of water equals 1kg, a dashed convenient little fact that was wasted on the poor divils with their hankering for all things imperial across the pond.

TheChizler

Nice explainer here

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/dccircuits/electrical-energy.html

Slightly Kwackers

Thank you, that I suppose explains fully why so many manufacturers don't give a Wattage.

Cooking my EU housebrick until soft and squishy starts to make sense now :-)

I thought I was missing some fundamental bit of information out.

Many thanks for your help.

Slightly Kwackers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121987514#Comment_121987514

Thanks, I have cancelled an order with Amazon for their 2.4 kW device.

I was going for an Indesit advertised at DID and Harvey Norman. The DID coming in at 1800W to the oven and 2.2 kW to the grill. The exact same model from Harvey Norman is simply quoted as 1500W

This was one of the few devices to quote "sensible figures", I could understand.

Looking at the spares suppliers for heating elements, the Indesit IFW63301X has a grill element rated at 1.5kW and an fan oven element rated at 1.8kW

I really am at a loss to understand why buying what must be the simplest possible device technically should have to be akin to buying a pig in a poke.

Maybe I cancelled the Amazon unit prematurely, but I will take a look at one or two on offer tomorrow and see if a ratings plate is visible. From my conversations on the phone, I have my doubts as to whether the staff are any better trained than the genius that told me a 90 W PSU would be too powerful a replacement for the 60W laptop supply that bit the dust.

An element and a thermostat will always get to temperature with 3kW of dissipation, whereas a low power oven might take a month of Sundays to do my sourdough in my Duch oven. It takes an hour to get the inside of the cast iron oven to 200C in my gas device, so having some pile of junk work very cheaply for the first day or so of warm up time is not really going to be a saving I will be happy about.

I am a bit of a fanatic about the EU and its benefits, but on this occasion I dont like the energy labels at all, they mean nothing to me.

I like the nice simple Watts per Meter Square losses through the case for a given temperature and the ability to reach the set point in the shortest time possible. It really is cheaper that way I think.

Slightly Kwackers

It seems there is a bit of interest in the subject although the replies have dried up.

I would like to mention a young lady at Harvey Norman though who pointed out the wattage label inside the door on each and every oven.

It's not the first time that I have found their advice above and beyond the "box shifters".

Alas I bought an Indecent in the end from Soundstore as HN had a limited stock of higher power units without the extra electronics that ends up flashing away and needing a clock reset after the numerous power cuts we have here.

Now why on earth is such an important feature like power relegated to a label inside the oven door when one of the most exciting features of buying an appliance is wondering if the little wheel in the electricity meter is going to fly apart like an underrated grinding wheel :-)

As far as the power going into the food or green lines on a label goes, the fact that a 2.75 kW oven can go into a restricted albeit ventilated in a limited way space, suggests it has to be pretty efficient. I wouldn't feel confident leaving one of my outside lights in the minimum space required in the oven installation diagrams.