The complaint that narrows fastest
Most oven calls are about degrees. This one is not. An oven that will not heat at all — no warmth, no smell of the first heat, nothing after twenty minutes — is one of the few faults that gets narrower the moment somebody describes it properly, and the description is worth getting right before anyone drives anywhere.
People type it three ways and mean three different things. Oven not heating usually means no heat at all. Oven not heating up often means it heats and stops short. Oven not heating but the stove top works means something specific about which half of the appliance has the problem, and on some ranges that sentence is worth a great deal.
What the first ten minutes rules out
The supply comes first, always. A built-in electric oven runs on two legs of 240 volts, and if one of those legs is gone the appliance does not go dead — it goes half dead. Lights, display and fan can all be perfectly normal while nothing that makes heat works at all, because the element draws across both legs and the electronics draw across one. An oven that looks alive and heats nothing is the classic shape of a lost leg, and it is a breaker, a lug or a connection rather than anything inside the appliance.
Skipping this step is how people end up buying an element for a problem that was never in the oven.
On a gas oven the equivalent question is whether gas is arriving. The cooktop answers half of it on an all-gas range: if the surface burners light, gas is in the appliance and the question moves downstream to the oven’s own safety valve and its igniter. On a dual-fuel range the cooktop answers nothing at all, because the oven below it is electric and shares nothing with the burners above except a cabinet.
Then ignition, or the element
A gas oven does not simply open a valve. The igniter has to draw enough current to prove it is hot enough before the safety valve will open, and an igniter that has aged glows perfectly well while drawing too little to satisfy that circuit. It looks right and nothing lights. That is the single most common no-heat fault on a gas oven, and it is also the one that most often gets misdiagnosed from the doorway, because the visible evidence — a glowing igniter — points the wrong way.
An electric oven fails more plainly. An element that has gone open circuit reads as an open circuit, and it usually shows a blister or a split where it went. The part that takes judgement is what happens next: whether the element simply reached the end of its life, or whether the relay driving it welded shut and cooked it, which is a board fault wearing an element’s clothes.
Where the board comes into it
This part of Florida sees roughly 68 thunderstorm days a year, and a surge does not usually kill a control outright. It damages one output. The oven then behaves exactly as though the thing on the end of that output had failed — no heat from one element, no call for ignition, a preheat that counts up and never arrives — and the appliance gets one new part, then another, before anyone suspects the control.
That is the case for measuring rather than replacing. A relay that is not closing is testable, and a board proved by test is a different purchase from a board bought on suspicion.
What we actually do
Supply first, at the appliance and not at the panel. Then reproduce the fault cold, because a no-heat oven has to be watched through a full call for heat to see where the sequence stops. On gas, the igniter’s current draw is measured while the valve is asked to open — the number is the diagnosis, and it is the one thing a visual check cannot give you. On electric, continuity at the element and then whether the relay that feeds it is actually closing.
Three faults come out of that, and they cost different money: an igniter, an element, or the control driving whichever one it is. The price band table further down this page covers all three, and the firm figure goes in the written estimate before anything is ordered. If the answer comes back dearer than you expected, the repair-or-replace arithmetic sets it against what a new appliance would actually cost.
Before you call
Two things are worth checking, and neither needs tools. Whether the oven is in a delayed-start or sabbath mode, which suspends heating while leaving the display entirely normal — it is a more common answer than anybody expects, and we have driven out for it. And whether anything else in the house lost power recently, because that is the question that turns a strange fault into an explained one.
Then call. We are an independent repair company, the visit is an $80 flat diagnostic credited toward the repair, and if the answer turns out to be a setting rather than a part we will say so and charge you nothing further.
Common follow-ups
The cooktop works but the oven will not heat. What does that tell you?
On a dual-fuel range, almost nothing, because the two halves run on different supplies — gas above, electric below. On an all-gas range it is more useful: the gas is clearly arriving at the appliance, so the question moves to the oven's own valve, its igniter and the control that decides when to open.
Bake works but broil does not. Is that one fault or two?
Usually one. Two elements or two burners driven by the same board through separate relays will fail one at a time, and the half that still works is the proof the supply and the control are fine. It points at the dead element or at the relay that feeds it, not at the oven as a whole.
The oven says it is preheating and never gets warm. Is that the sensor?
Not on its own. A display counting up while nothing heats means the control believes it has asked for heat and is not getting the result, which is an ignition or element question first. A sensor fault more often shows as an oven that heats but settles in the wrong place.
Is an oven that will not heat worth repairing?
Nearly always, because the parts involved are the ordinary ones. It is worth repairing right up until several systems have gone at once, which is the comparison the repair-or-replace page does properly with both sets of figures.