Continual cleaning v/s Self Cleaning oven Which is better?

I use to have a Self Cleaning oven and I have to say I was very happy with it. I would put it on the Auto Clean cycle and except for having to replace the Lock once, it worked great. I don't recall it ever failing to clean up a mess. I wouldn't do anything except use the auto setting once or twice a year, then MAYBE sweep out the dust.

Then I moved to a home with a Continuous Cleaning Oven. I didn't realize that me "I" was to be continuously clean the thing. It looked bad when I got it and though I cleaned it (per directions), it was soon back to a mess. It looks quite bad.

My question is, "Is this the common experience, or is mine the exception?" I would like to hear from those of you that have had experience with both.

Thank You.

RC

Reply to
RC
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Years ago we had a continuous clean oven. What a crappy idea. It was never really clean. Go back to a self clean if you can.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

Was that the hting which supposes to absorb dirt or something. I don't think they make it any more. Another idea did not pan out I guess.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

Continuous clean is a marketing joke. By putting a porous surface inside the oven and hoping that cooking spills will eventually go away makes an oven even harder to keep clean.

Reply to
Rick Blaine

-snip-

Never had a 'continuous clean'- but back in the 70's during my short life as an appliance salesman we used to refer to them as 'continuous dirty'. Is yours an old one or are they still not ready for prime time.

[I'm with you- I love the self cleaning. *That* was a good idea.] Jim
Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

My mother built a house with the built in continous cleaning oven and never was happy with it. She had a stove that was about 20 years old from the old house that she kep in the basement for canning. After a few years the old stove looked cleaner than the new oven. Mother was very particular about her stove being clean and hated the new oven.

My wife and I have always had the ovens you turn on the super heat and burn off the grease and they look much cleaner than the other ovens we have seen.

Comsumer reports give about the same report as you did. Most are just not happy witht he continuous cleaning ovens.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery
*************************** We clean our more in the winter when the heat is helping keep the house warm and avoid doing so in the summer.
Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

Holly had written this in response to

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: Hi!

A week ago Friday, my Sears Kenmore Continuous Self Cleaning Oven caught on fire. It has worked faithfully for me ever since it was new 17 years ago. My teenagers had cooked some pizzas the night before and a piece of sausage fell to the bottom of the oven. It flamed up right by the leg that held up the heating filament. The little leg had melted enough to allow the burner to touch the bottom of the oven and I hadn't noticed it, and they hadn't told me about the sausage. Long story short, when I put a slow cooking roast in the next morning, by mid-day the burner had caught fire and had gone far enough to render the oven useless due to the fact of its age and the cost of replacing the part. The fire started because it was touching the bottom of the oven in the place where the sausage had burned and where the leg had melted down! It was not the fault of the oven. I loved my oven. It was always clean.

All these years, all I have ever had to do is sometimes either sweep or vacuum out the dust. That oven NEVER failed me.

All ovens require a certain amount of care when cooking so that foods don't splatter and spill etc. while cooking. Most people who have really dirty ovens do a lot of messy cooking that could be avoided if they would use pans large enough to catch spits and pops.

If you do have a spill, or a cheesy mess, swab out the mess before it gets baked on. If it gets baked on then you'll have a smoky mess during the self clean cycle, and in a continuous clean oven, the smoke could affect the food.

I have also had ovens that required me to use oven cleaners and scouring pads. I would NEVER go back to that!

I now have purchased a new oven. It's a Maytag self cleaning oven with a glass range top. The self-clean option has three settings. BUT I have to set it to clean and have to remove the oven racks too. I think this will be more work in the long run, and I will miss my old oven for its no-muss no-fuss clean.

For me, the new Maytag's other points are what sold me. I love the size, the nice look with no oven filament showing in the bottom - it's embedded

- and the oven cooks more evenly than my old one which required me to move pans and turn meats etc.

As for the continuous self-clean vs. self clean -- common sense applies to both ... don't get the oven SO dirty that it will smoke or flame. There really is a certain amount of preventive care that serves every cook well.

Cover meats, don't let foil touch the sides of the oven. Never let any food touch the sides of the oven. Clean out all large chunks of foods and debris as soon as you know its there. My teens should have put a catch plate under their pizza which they cooked on the rack. Never put the catch pans on the bottom of the oven, just put it on the bottom rack directly under the foods that might boil over or melt off...etc.

I hope this is helpful to you!

Best wishes, Holly

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Reply to
Holly

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I have never known of a continuous clean oven that really worked, but the self cleaners do. However they do consumer energy and in the summer will heat up the kitchen.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Wow, how lazy can you get. Push a couple of buttons and take out the rack in under 30 seconds.

The rack don't have to come out, but if you leave them in they discolor a bit and don't slide as easily, but you can save 24 seconds every time you set up the cleaning cycle.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

We bought a cottage with an old continuous clean oven, and I LOVE it! Not because it's so great with cleaning, but for this reason:

If you leave it on "preheat" instead of "bake", say at 350', both upper and lower heating units click on to maintain temp. I LOVE this feature! I use it for certain recipes, potatoes, veggies, anything I'm roasting that I want to brown a bit also. Works great! You can get brown and crispy on top and bottom.

Of course, gotta remember to switch over to just "bake" if it's a cake in the oven. I need to replace my range at home, and can't find anything that calls itself continuous clean anymore. Most newer ranges of course will preheat, but once desired temp is reached, only lower unit engages. I'd really like to find a range where I could maintain a steady temp and have the heat coming from upper and lower unit heating coils.

Any advice? I don't want to pay a fortune for expensive convection oven.

Thanks, Sue

Reply to
Sue

We bought a cottage with an old continuous clean oven, and I LOVE it! Not because it's so great with cleaning, but for this reason:

If you leave it on "preheat" instead of "bake", say at 350', both upper and lower heating units click on to maintain temp. I LOVE this feature! I use it for certain recipes, potatoes, veggies, anything I'm roasting that I want to brown a bit also. Works great! You can get brown and crispy on top and bottom.

Of course, gotta remember to switch over to just "bake" if it's a cake in the oven. I need to replace my range at home, and can't find anything that calls itself continuous clean anymore. Most newer ranges of course will preheat, but once desired temp is reached, only lower unit engages. I'd really like to find a range where I could maintain a steady temp and have the heat coming from upper and lower unit heating coils.

Any advice? I don't want to pay a fortune for expensive convection oven.

Thanks, Sue

Reply to
Sue

Continuous clean has a "catalytic" coating that burns off deposits under normal temperatures. Self clean heats to extreme temperatures to clean. Self cleaning ovens are NOT designed to be used in a tight fitting space - they require an inch or two of clearance on both sides. We pull ours out to run the clean cycle (the few times we use the clean feature)

Go for the convection oven - the feature is NOT that terribly expensive, and it is VERY usefull and actually uses less power to do the same cooking job.

Reply to
clare

They don't even make continuous cleaning oven.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

I don't think they make them, and I looked at least 4 years ago. I liked mine, because you didn't have to do anything. There was nothing you could do. Using oven cleaner or any kind of cleaning just ruins the continuous cleaning surface

Of course it's never perfectly clean but it's never very dirty either. I suppose one coudl gte it cleaner by running it for a while with nothing in it. Or smething that never makes a mess, Bread?

I woudl still have mine if I hadn't set fire to it.

You could look on craig's list or better yet, list yourself on craig's list as wanting to buy one.

That's how I replaced the one I set fire to**. I needed Harvest Gold and within a couple days, someone called and sold me his. Looked like new, Perfect. I don't know how they managed that. He said his mother was compulsive. Nothing else would account for it. I would have thought it *was* new but I found a tiny bit of dirt in a couple corners. $100 iirc. This one has self-cleaning, which I do about once a year. The model number gave a model that was entirely diffrernt, but eventually, trial and error and looking for similar numbers, I found a manual that fit this one.

**Actually the guy who sold me the oven found my ad because he was looking for "fire" wood, and I mentioned the fire. By chance he wanted to get rid of this oven, which was his second, that he got when his mother moved out of her home. Though he said he was going to buy a replacement, I don't know why.

Maybe you can you rewire whatever oven you have. It only requirs that the switch be able to carry the current for both of htem. The thermostat will work the same. And that the connection not be permanent, that is, you don't want that any time you broil you also bake, and that any time you bake you also broil. The solution to that is a toggle switch, marked Both and Separate. You'd need a heavy dury switch.. If it's double pole or more, connect them all in parallel.

If you wanted to be fancy, you could make it a push button and a relay, so that every time you turned the oven off, evenif they were connected to gether before the relay dropped out and you'd have to push the button to make it be both again. This would also mean the heavy current would have a shorter path but I don't thin that is significant. Others may disagree. You'd need a heavy load relay that also won't be damaged by the heat of the oven. They have them online. If it's double pole or more, connect them all in parallel.

I rewired a room AC so it woud turn completely off, instead of just the compressor, the fan too, just by moving three clips around, to rearrange where the switch went. Here you ight need some oven wire, whatever that is. And you wouldn't want to so c

Reply to
micky

I am sure I just saw a Kenmore continuous clean oven advertised recently - and GE too???

Reply to
clare

self cleaning is the only way to go..... they are better insulated so more energy efficent. and although its not recommended i put my gas grill parts in my self cleaning oven on a short cycle, they look brand new when they come out.

once they go thru the self cleaning cycle i let them get cold, and put them in the dishwasher....

Reply to
bob haller

On 08/10/2015 9:25 PM, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote: ...

Not _necessarily_ true; the one here is in the cabinet row just as any other; it has sufficient insulation that is in the owners manual to be allowed. It's a 30+ yr old GE with also the microwave in the oven; no longer available and will be sorely missed if it ever does give up the proverbial ghost...

It's gone thru the cleaning cycle in situ any number of times during that time with no issues.

Reply to
dpb

On 08/10/2015 11:06 PM, Tony Hwang wrote: ...

Au contraire, ...

Reply to
dpb

Same here. I had an older 30" oven/microwave in a cabinet. I replaced it with KitchenAid 36" dual ovens and had to rework the cabinet to make it fit, with essentially zero clearance on the sides. I was a bit worried about the cleaning heat, as one side I had to glue on a new piece of oak veneer. But it's worked fine. When cleaning, the side gets a bit warm, but nothing worrisome. What counts is the installation specs for the actual oven.

As to continuous vers self-clean, no opinion there. These ovens are self-cleaning and work great.

Reply to
trader_4

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