Kooka Kleen Safety Warning – Have your cooker switch checked

For over four years now I have been professionally cleaning ovens and I thought I had seen it all in my daily work but things like I am now going to talk about prove how wrong you can be.

Last week I was working on a property that was part of a local letting agencies portfolio but was at that time empty. All was going well with the clean. At certain times while carrying out a clean I have to turn the oven off and on to check things are ok and of course at the end of a clean to ensure everything is performing as it should be.

This oven in particular was quite a basic model and just had control knobs and no display to show it was on.

I had finished the clean and was turning the oven control knob to fire it all up and realised the big red isolator switch marked Cooker on the wall was off and I though how silly of me to forget – the oven isn’t going to work with that off – but to my utter disbelief the cooker came on!!

So let’s clarify that – the isolator was off but the oven was live and on!! I tried the isolation switch thinking it had been wired up in reverse so on was off and off was on but no, it didn’t do a thing and the oven had a constant live feed.

It might not sound like a big deal but someone may have needed to turn the oven off in a hurry or might have been working on replacing a part, for such things you need it turned off and the mains isolated.

The way this oven had been wired could have ended up killing someone!!

I immediately informed the letting Agent, who then confirmed to me she had contacted the landlady to have it checked over and made safe.

So for the benefit of any readers and to prevent fatal accidents, please have a competent person check your cooker or oven isolation switch to make double sure it’s all correctly wired up as an isolation switch should do just that – isolate the power for safety to prevent injury or death.