Exploding ovens

or rather exploding oven doors: just had to get this off my chest

I had to replace an element in our oven, and decided that it was a little worse for wear. We decided to give it a good clean.

We had bought a cleaner called OVEN PRIDE, some time ago and decided to try it out. On the box we read, " Caution, this product actually works". Looked good. One evening I applied the gel to the inside of the oven, the racks and the glass door. Leaving the gel on the surfaces overnight as the instructions said this was a good idea.

Next morning, I cleaned up the residue and was pleasantly surprised that the stuff had actually done what it said on the box.

At lunchtime I turned on the oven, ready for my wife to use and left her in the kitchen. Very shortly there was a shout from the kitchen, " you had better come and see this". The inner glass door which I had just cleaned, had virtually exploded and now lay on the floor of the oven in hundreds of pieces. The sodium hydroxide gel had obviously affected the glass in some way, probably affecting the chemical structure of the glass. It had certainly lost its ability to resist the heat of the oven.

I emailed the suppliers of the product and one of their staff, a Ms Hilda Tabas, very obligingly told me they had changed the packaging since I purchased it and now did not recommend it for tempered glass. No doubt they had had many similar, previous complaints. She did not even offer any apologies for waht her product had done. But then I guess that is the way with customer services today.

BTW the glass door panel cost me £52 to replace, I doubt very much that I will be using any similar products again in case the new door panel gets splashed and the same thing happens.