My wife and I recently found ourselves shopping for a new electric range. The unit in our home was original to the home and, thus, 18 years old. It was still working well, but my wife yearned for some of the modern conveniences included in the more contemporary models.
We also have a young son who is testing boundaries, and the existing stove did not have the tip-over protection that newer models include as standard. That little bracket on the back foot is not sold separately, by the way, so adding it to the existing appliance was not an option.
We did our research and found several models we liked. One feature we really wanted was an oven door lock so we could keep our son from opening it. Many models had the lock feature and we made sure the model we settled on had it as well. However, in talking to the salesman, we found that the designers had limited the lock's use.
Several of the options include a button labeled "Oven Lock" or "Control Lock," but this only locks the electronic control panel. The only way to lock the oven is to turn it on self-clean, and, even in self-clean, many do not lock until the oven reaches 400 to 500 degrees. To the best of our knowledge, there are no models on the market with an electronic lock that can be actuated by the owner without activating the self-clean cycle.
This means that the actuation of the lock is available to the main processor and there is a button labeled lock, but the smart folks did not put the two together. I realize that few people need the door to lock as the population interested in this feature is limited to those with little people at their feet. However, I am having trouble making sense of who would want to lock the control panel. If a child can reach the control panel, he is either tall enough to unlock it himself, or he is sitting on the counter top or stove. So the lock is of no use.
If my 20-month-old son is sitting on the stove, he can't turn on the oven controls but he can turn a knob for the stove top and get one powerful seat warmer going. Maybe the microprocessor ran out of storage to make that connection happen. We enjoy our new stove, so far, but I am still at a loss for how the monkeys didn't see that the oven lock button should actually lock the oven.
This entry was submitted by Nathan Taylor and edited by Rob Spiegel
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