Gas range electric outlet - converter or replace 'er?

January 1, 2018 12:53 PM

We have a gas range with a standard electric plug for the clock, burner ignitors, etc. Right now it's plugged into a wall outlet above the countertop next to the range, but that looks pretty ugly and we'd like to hide the cord better. There's an old outlet (pics here) behind the range next to the gas line, but because the prongs are different, I'm not sure how/if we can use it. Is there a converter I can buy? Or do we need to have an electrician replace it with a standard outlet? Thanks!
posted by brozek to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

Best answer: I'm fairly certain that's a 240v outlet. That's what the outlet my washing machine is plugged into looks like.

But even if there exists a converter, do you really want to mess with some hacky electrical solution behind your gas stove? Get an electrician.
posted by brainmouse at 12:59 PM on January 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: That looks like a 240v 50A socket to me (based on a chart of all the different socket configurations and what they carry). I can't imagine you want to adapt that down to 120v 20A, but getting an electrician to put a standard socket behind your stove ought to be a pretty trivial job.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 1:06 PM on January 1, 2018

Best answer: I just dealt with the same problem because we were switching from an electric to a gas range. I wound up paying for the electrician. There are some buy options available but nothing I felt great about having behind our oven and nothing that was significantly cheaper than having an electrician come do the work.
posted by mumblelard at 1:22 PM on January 1, 2018

Response by poster: I was leaning toward an electrician anyway, so three answers that direction in half an hour makes it easier. Thanks!
posted by brozek at 1:36 PM on January 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

There is no neutral on that outlet. You need to get an electrician to convert the outlet to a standard outlet.
posted by Mitheral at 1:36 PM on January 1, 2018

Yeah, what the electrician will probably do is just drop the current outlet down behind the stove (you will probably have to patch/repaint the hole left behind)...IF that's even legal...there might be regs on how close the outlet can be to gas (the old outlet is for an electric stove so no gas/gas shut off. It's a good question to ask before they come down and (maybe) can't do it.
Otherwise, have you considered the possibility of 'large macrame owl' or 'hanging spice rack'?
posted by sexyrobot at 1:44 PM on January 1, 2018

There is no limitation on the location of the outlet relative to the gas line (Canada actually requires a outlet behind the range when there is a gas connection for the range).

If you called me as your electrician I'd:

1. replace the black plastic outlet with a 4 inch square deep box.
2. Toss on a single gang raised box cover for an outlet.
3. Pig tail the current cable to fit an outlet and install the outlet.
4. Replace the 2 pole breaker feeding the cable with a single pole 15A

Less than a $100 in material and a couple hours max and usually less than an hour.
posted by Mitheral at 3:08 PM on January 1, 2018

There is no neutral on that outlet.

The middle prong is the neutral. But perhaps you meant to say there is no ground wire. If you had a 4-prong 240 V outlet with ground, it would be trivial for an electrician to convert it to a 120V outlet with ground by swapping out the breaker at the panel and capping off the unused leg.

Now, you could convert the disconnected leg of the 240 to be a ground, but that might be rather unorthodox, although electrically sound. Just strip the insulation off the unused leg at the outlet and at the breaker panel and make it look like a ground wire.

But the other issue is that you still have a junction box above the stove. You won't have a cord dangling from it but you can't just drywall over it. The junction must still be accessible with a blank cover plate unless you can completely isolate it from all other circuits at the breaker panel. But you wouldn't have a cord dangling from the wall.

So this might be doable. You would have to get an electrician to see if he is comfortable with doing it.
posted by JackFlash at 6:56 PM on January 1, 2018

Keep in mind that electric ranges still use that type of outlet. So I don’t think I would rewire it, but keep it as an option if you ever wanted to replace your gas stove with an electric one.
posted by raisingsand at 9:18 PM on January 1, 2018

I've actually done this; we had an electric range converted to gas. While you can get adapters that let you run a 120V appliance on a 240V outlet, they are hacky and not intended for permanent use.

The job is not especially hard. Basically the electrician will swap the outlet behind the stove for a 120V 15A one, or whatever you require, and then will swap the breaker and do some other re-wiring in the panelbox. The result is that you'll have a 120V 15A 3-wire (hot, neutral, ground) with vastly oversized cabling but a properly rated breaker.

There might be complexity if the wiring is aluminum; some electricians don't like and advocate replacing Al wiring whenever encountered—others will work with it (there is some technique to installing it and additional considerations beyond what's required with copper). YMMV there.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:42 PM on January 1, 2018

JackFlash: "The middle prong is the neutral. But perhaps you meant to say there is no ground wire. If you had a 4-prong 240 V outlet with ground, it would be trivial for an electrician to convert it to a 120V outlet with ground by swapping out the breaker at the panel and capping off the unused leg. "

Whoops, you're right. We don't have those in Canada and I must have been thinking of the 7-20R or variant.

Anyways the retrofit to a 15A receptacle is still as I outlined. Even in the case of aluminum wire though the costs would be higher for the special connectors required.
posted by Mitheral at 10:52 AM on January 2, 2018

One minor wrinkle is using the unused leg of the 240V for equipment ground. According to Code 250.119(B) a ground conductor in a multi-wire cable must be either be bare or have green insulation its entire length. In industrial or commercial installations, not residential, you can re-mark a non-green conductor as an equipment ground by stripping all exposed (visible) insulation or else marking it with green tape. This must be at all access locations for the conductor. In your case, this would be at the outlet and the breaker panel.

Technically this sort of re-marking of an equipment ground in a multi-wire cable is not allowed in a residential application, but only the most picky of electrical inspectors would object as long as there can be no possible confusion. I would just strip the insulation off as much of the ground wire as possible so that it looks like a bare ground wire.
posted by JackFlash at 11:57 AM on January 2, 2018