Thread: Electric oven switch 10A,13A, or something else

Originally Posted by barney

i don't usually advrtise this, but i am a sparky. and it looks like you are about to be ripped off.
turn the power off and take the switch plate off the wall. if the mech (the middle bit) has pushed into the wall and that is the source of your woes, it is meant to clip back in to the plate. if there are broken bits, go down to your local electrical wholesaler, turks , l&h, TLE or whatever, and get an oven isolation switch, dont know the part number and it would vary for different brands anyway. the switch they will give you will have oven written on it, like the one you already have, and will be rated somewhere around 25 to 35 amps.
it's not a fuse, it's not there to protect the oven, it's there to protect you if something goes wrong and your sparky if he's working on it. so rating is not important, as long as it will handle the load of your oven.
i hope this helps

Hi Barney, It's always good to get an expert opinion. This sounds like the "bees knees" to me.

Best Wishes,

Originally Posted by HangOver

I mean just what the hell was he thinking?

he was thinking you asked for a switch that looks just like a light switch, so thats what he gave you

Originally Posted by HangOver

He could of given that to someone who had less of an idea than me and they could have installed it!

Yes I know, if you don't know get a sparkie it's their job.

theres a reason the electrical trade is so heavily regulated and licenced

Originally Posted by HangOver

maybe it'll say the rating on the old switch somewhere?

with the switch in the off position, look at the underside of the switch knob, it'll have:
10A (or 15A/20A)
250V written on it

barney has a point though, theres a good chance the switch mech may have just popped out of the wall plate

Sprint has touched on one of my pet hates, the sale of electrical parts in variety stores.
all of these parts have A disclaimer written on the package that says it needs to be installed by a licensed electrician, so why do we sell them to the general public? most of them wont call a sparky until they blow something up...then we double the price, or introduce the arrogance levy.

when they started this in the early 90's, the trouble i had with pedantic customers not wanting to pay my price for gear. back then i could buy a box of 10 double gpo's for a price that worked out as roughly $11 a piece.
i would carry them around in my van so i could provide quick service to my customers for sometimes months if i didn't get a call on a power point.
i would on-sell them for about 13.50, making a slight profit from my discount at the wholesaler.
some customers would question my price asking why they should pay 13.50 when they could get them for $10 at big w or bunnings. the home builder types were the worst.
they could buy them from bunnings cheaper than i could get them from my wholesaler. the same thing happened with cable, unfortunately it was hard to explain the difference between the cheap stuff they got from bunning (solid core 1mm for lights, which is the minimum) to the stuff i would supply (stranded 1.5mm). stranded cables are a lot more resilient to twisting and rejoining, the cores don't break off as easily and by using 1.5mm, you can load more lights onto a circuit, cutting down on installation time (and repair time) and circuits back to the switchboard, saving on materials. but people just didn't understand, and at the time, the recession was in full swing and everyone was out to undercut the next guy. i couldn't maintain a customer base with the rates i charged and still pay off a mortgage and meet running costs. so i had to fold and ge a real job for another sparky with a huge customer base. 13 and a half years on, still there but not doing light and power anymore, just fixing commercial cooking equipment for restuarants, hotel, clubs and maccas.


a simple post about dumb shop assistants and i tell my life story.
boy did i get carried away!

Originally Posted by barney

i don't usually advrtise this, but i am a sparky. and it looks like you are about to be ripped off.
turn the power off and take the switch plate off the wall. if the mech (the middle bit) has pushed into the wall and that is the source of your woes, it is meant to clip back in to the plate. if there are broken bits, go down to your local electrical wholesaler, turks , l&h, TLE or whatever, and get an oven isolation switch, dont know the part number and it would vary for different brands anyway. the switch they will give you will have oven written on it, like the one you already have, and will be rated somewhere around 25 to 35 amps.
it's not a fuse, it's not there to protect the oven, it's there to protect you if something goes wrong and your sparky if he's working on it. so rating is not important, as long as it will handle the load of your oven.
i hope this helps

^^^^what he said, the mech, has probably just dropped out of the switch plate, just pop it back in and don't be so heavy handed, who the **** uses them anyway, worst reg, they ever brought out, wire a 30k kitchen and have to fit an ugly switch customers are never impressed

Originally Posted by barney

Sprint has touched on one of my pet hates, the sale of electrical parts in variety stores.
all of these parts have A disclaimer written on the package that says it needs to be installed by a licensed electrician, so why do we sell them to the general public? most of them wont call a sparky until they blow something up...then we double the price, or introduce the arrogance levy.

when they started this in the early 90's, the trouble i had with pedantic customers not wanting to pay my price for gear. back then i could buy a box of 10 double gpo's for a price that worked out as roughly $11 a piece.
i would carry them around in my van so i could provide quick service to my customers for sometimes months if i didn't get a call on a power point.
i would on-sell them for about 13.50, making a slight profit from my discount at the wholesaler.
some customers would question my price asking why they should pay 13.50 when they could get them for $10 at big w or bunnings. the home builder types were the worst.
they could buy them from bunnings cheaper than i could get them from my wholesaler. the same thing happened with cable, unfortunately it was hard to explain the difference between the cheap stuff they got from bunning (solid core 1mm for lights, which is the minimum) to the stuff i would supply (stranded 1.5mm). stranded cables are a lot more resilient to twisting and rejoining, the cores don't break off as easily and by using 1.5mm, you can load more lights onto a circuit, cutting down on installation time (and repair time) and circuits back to the switchboard, saving on materials. but people just didn't understand, and at the time, the recession was in full swing and everyone was out to undercut the next guy. i couldn't maintain a customer base with the rates i charged and still pay off a mortgage and meet running costs. so i had to fold and ge a real job for another sparky with a huge customer base. 13 and a half years on, still there but not doing light and power anymore, just fixing commercial cooking equipment for restuarants, hotel, clubs and maccas.


a simple post about dumb shop assistants and i tell my life story.
boy did i get carried away!

Nothing like good quality Arlec switches and GPO's

lol tell me about it...... had a job a lil while ago, every time they plugged ANYTHING into one particular GPO it'd trip the RCD on that circuit..... noticed that it was a 2000 series GPO, the rest were all older HPM items...... wanna guess what had happened?

New install? left the MEN point in and put the RCD protected neutrals in the same bar seen it done a few times

The 2025 couldn't have crapped itself....not clipsal, I like clipsal

nope

this is end user level stupidity we're talking about here too.......