What's up with this oven wire?

July 30, 2015 5:46 PM

Isn't there supposed to be a rubber coating on this oven wire?

Our wire under the stove eye had it's rubber coating melted by the eye of the stove. We took a picture, then called our landlord to replace the wire. They replaced it, but the wire has no rubber coating. Is this dangerous or am I missing something here?


Old Wire

New Wire

posted by MikeHoncho to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

(FYI The 'Old Wire' pic doesn't load for me.)
posted by goblinbox at 5:49 PM on July 30, 2015

Response by poster: Odd, it worked on our computers.

Here is the raw link from Tinypic

http://oi61.tinypic.com/2lmusnm.jpg
posted by MikeHoncho at 5:59 PM on July 30, 2015

It's not obvious from the pics what this wire's job is, so I can't guess how much current it carries. It is a little troubling, though, that they replaced an insulated cable with a single bare copper conductor.
posted by jon1270 at 6:00 PM on July 30, 2015

By "eye" do you mean pilot light?

If so, that wire would be carrying heat rather than electricity to a thermally controlled valve which is meant to turn off the gas when the pilot light goes out, and that would not be unsafe -- although it might turn off the gas sometimes when it shouldn't.
posted by jamjam at 6:21 PM on July 30, 2015

Response by poster: It's an electric oven, sorry I didn't mention that. These pictures are taken of the left back burner.

The repairman said the wire powered the interior baking part of the oven, and not the burners themselves.
posted by MikeHoncho at 6:26 PM on July 30, 2015

It would help if you removed the pan so we could see everything. Is it possible that the bare wire is a newly added ground and there is an insulated wire out of the frame?
posted by rockindata at 7:15 PM on July 30, 2015

Best answer: It's entirely likely that what you have there is not a power supply wire but the lead for a thermocouple temperature probe, and that what appears to be a thick copper wire is in fact an outer shielding jacket. Thermocouples are very low voltage signalling devices (less voltage than you'd find inside a typical headphone cable) and that copper jacket is probably grounded.
posted by flabdablet at 12:05 AM on July 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

I definitely have had an exposed wire that looks just like that in my previous electric stovetops.
posted by mskyle at 6:58 AM on July 31, 2015