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[Grilling24x7]

Hi,
I have a kenmore 790 double oven.  I use a fibrament pizza stone placed on the lowest rung.  I have always been making NY style pizzas at 550 degrees.

Well my last pizza dough turned out undercooked (see NY pizza section - http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,9425.0.html).  I decided to buy a relatively cheap oven thermometer to see just how accurate my oven is.  Long story short when I set my oven to 550 the actual temperature is around 500 degrees! 

I break out the oven instruction manual and I see that you can calibrate the oven up to 35 degrees +/-.  So I set it for +35 degrees and then set it to 550.  After calibrating the oven hit 550 degrees, after a few minutes it was actually closer to 565 degrees!  While I'm smiling and getting excited for my next pizza, "beep beep beep beep" and an ERR F10 message.   My instruction manual is no help for this error message and not too many answers exist on the web for what to do.  One person says this is a "runaway temp" error message.  I wonder if now my oven is getting to hot and this is a safety shut off error message.  I called Sears and they can't help without sending a repair man for about $130.  That's not going to happen.

Any thoughts on what to do?  I'm not getting this message when it cools down.  Only when its maxing out at 550.

John

[pacoast]

Error F10 means that the oven is shutting off because it thinks that there is a runaway temperature condition. Inevitably this means that the RTD sensor is faulty, damaged or has loose wiring to it. If you are a DIY'er, you could ensure that the power is disconnected, then measure the RTD temperature probe with an multimeter. It should be about 1100 ohms at room temperature.

If this is all "Greek" to you or it is under warranty have them make a service call. If it is out of warranty, then you have to make a choice of whether to put it back to the original setting or have the probe checked & probably replaced. I guess see if they will quote you a price for a service call & the part and decide from there. If you are not familiar with electrical safety procedures, DO NOT attempt to repair it yourself.

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[pacoast]

I should add that it is possible that they have fixed a maximum "safe" temperature for your model around 550F if which case you will always get this error if you exceed 550F outside of a cleaning cycle. No way to easily change it in that case short of ripping out all of the oven electronics. But on past models the "trip" temperature was >700F. If you can get someone with a Kenmore service manual to look it sometimes spells out this temperature. And sometimes only the original designer has it documented somewhere.

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[Grilling24x7]

Oh geez - just what I want to hear!

A few questions b/c yes this is greek:

a.  Since this is a double oven, could I switch my stone to the lower oven w/o seeing the message?  Or does the RTD work on both ovens?
b.  What would happen if I keep using it w/o repair?  It only does it when the temp is cranked all the way.  i.e. i just baked fries at 450 no problem.

Thanks for the quick reply.

John

[pacoast]

Try not to shoot the messenger. Also, I don't have any specifics about your particular oven. I'm just going on experience with a variety of other Kenmores which have all been rather similar.

If you can set different temperatures for each oven, then it's likely that each one will have it's own temperature sensor. However, there is probably only one electronic brain for both ovens. And it might be designed so that the ovens work totally independently. Or being a safety issue they may have programmed it to shut down both ovens if it thinks there is a problem with either one. It's all how the original engineer thought it would work best. The easiest way to find out is to simply try it & hope that it works to your benefit.

Only someone with has worked on your specific model could give you a definite answer. If you happen to know anyone local that is good with electronics & you trust.. they could offset the temperature with some resistors or a PID. In other words, trick the oven into going higher because it thinks that the oven is at 500, when it is really 600F type of thing. But due to liability issues I don't think you'd ever find a retail shop that would modify your oven that way for you. With any luck the ovens are independently controlled & you can just move the pizza stone.

As to using the oven the way it is. You're probably fine. It was my oven I wouldn't worry about it. But I wouldn't leave it unsupervised when it was heating either. Of course lawyers & insurance agents take a dim view of anything unusual. So use your own best judgement.

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[mmarston]

I have an older Jennaire convection oven. When I began making pizzas i discovered a very unpleasant characteristic of this oven. After about an hour at 500 or above a sensor decides that the oven is in cleaning mode. If you do not have the door locked and the oven set to clean it shuts down!!!! It takes a good half hour before you can get it to heat again. I have worked around this by preheating with the broiler which bypasses the sensor. I switch to bake when I'm ready knowing I have at least 30 minutes before the damn thing shuts down.

Then I bought a 2Stone and never looked back.

[Grilling24x7]

Ok - thanks for all the replies.  I guess I'll try the lower oven next time and see what happens.  Hopefully the sensors aren't the same.  Worst case I can always resume cooking pizzas at the 500 degrees that I was doing in the past (even though I thought it was 550).

I guess this is just more reason for me to get a wood burning pizza oven for the back yard!

[UnConundrum]

John, if you can and did calibrate the oven, and now it's overshooting by 15 degrees at the upper limit, why not just re-adjust the calibration the opposite way?  Or.... set the thermostat to 525 to give some breathing room?

[Grilling24x7]

John, if you can and did calibrate the oven, and now it's overshooting by 15 degrees at the upper limit, why not just re-adjust the calibration the opposite way?  Or.... set the thermostat to 525 to give some breathing room?

This is a good idea.  I'll probably have to figure out what temp is causing the error and then shoot for just a bit under it.

Thanks