smeg oven blows out jet of "cooling" air above door

littlerock

we are currently away for a few days and the place we are staying has a new smeg "built under," multi function oven. I am thinking of buying a new oven so was interested to find out how it works and turned it on to the static setting (ie no fan).

I was very surprised to find it blowing out a strong current of air from a vent just above the door, on all settings. The user guide shows this air vent and says "the fan cools the oven and comes into operation during cooking. The fan causes a steady outflow of air from above the oven.'".This happens all the time the oven is on, even when it's internal fan is off.

The hob is set above the oven so to cook on it, if you stand in front of the oven to use the hob, you are continuously blasted by this strong current of air. I found it very irritating. Is this a feature of all modern ovens, or just German ones? Why is it necessary? My current oven does not do this and I do not have any problem with hot controls.

EssexExile

On mine it's to cool the controls which are just above the oven & it comes on once it senses a certain temperature & goes off after it's cooled down, long after you stop cooking. It's a built in oven though so I don't stand in front of it. It's not modern & it's not German, British Hotpoint about 10 years old.

JohnB47

My Neff does this. I think it's common.

Ours doesn't produce much of a flow of air, so it's not a nuisance at all. I do remember being on holiday once and had the same problem as you found - a far too forceful fan.

littlerock

the controls on my current oven door are just above the door and I don't find they overheat. in any case it is a built in eye level oven with the hob elsewhere so blowing out a constant stream of air would not be such an issue although I would still find d it annoying. But I still don't understand why it is needed.

The accommodation we are in also has underfloor heating which is it's only heat source and quite high ceilings (,it is a converted barn) and we are finding it hard to get it really warm. Constantly feeling a bit chilly in the air even when floor is warmish. Six this common for underfloor heating? Does it really need supplementary system in winter? we are thinking of buying a small fan heater to supplement it.

phil24_7

littlerock wrote: »

the controls on my current oven door are just above the door and I don't find they overheat. in any case it is a built in eye level oven with the hob elsewhere so blowing out a constant stream of air would not be such an issue although I would still find d it annoying. But I still don't understand why it is needed.

The accommodation we are in also has underfloor heating which is it's only heat source and quite high ceilings (,it is a converted barn) and we are finding it hard to get it really warm. Constantly feeling a bit chilly in the air even when floor is warmish. Six this common for underfloor heating? Does it really need supplementary system in winter? we are thinking of buying a small fan heater to supplement it.

Your best off starting a new thread for help with your problem but I would hazard a guess that because of the abnormal size of your rooms then the UFH is probably not quite up to the job. You may be able to adjust it (never had it so couldn't tell you) at the manifold, if not, you will need to add supplementary heating.

Grenage

I think most of the built-in ovens have a vent at the top, as you describe. I got so used to it, that when we moved into a new house I found its absence almost disconcerting - I keep checking the oven is on.

Ectophile

I've known free-standing cookers to have the fan as well. It seems to be pretty much standard whenever there are electronics directly above the oven.

Older cookers with simple mechanical controls wouldn't have needed it.

JohnB47

littlerock wrote: »

the controls on my current oven door are just above the door and I don't find they overheat. in any case it is a built in eye level oven with the hob elsewhere so blowing out a constant stream of air would not be such an issue although I would still find d it annoying. But I still don't understand why it is needed.

The accommodation we are in also has underfloor heating which is it's only heat source and quite high ceilings (,it is a converted barn) and we are finding it hard to get it really warm. Constantly feeling a bit chilly in the air even when floor is warmish. Six this common for underfloor heating? Does it really need supplementary system in winter? we are thinking of buying a small fan heater to supplement it.

What type of Underfloor heating (UFH)? Pipes central heating or electric? In either cae, there should be some way of regulating the temperature.

littlerock

OK have looked up cooling fan oven noise on web and this fan is indeed to cool the electronics. There are videos of how to change the cooling fan for diy-ers and once the oven is dismantled you can see the fans are very large, unecessarily so I would have thought. After all pc makers have cracked it - pc fans are not the size of a small rolling pin these days. Oven ones are. OK fan needs to be larger on an oven. But there seems to be very little insulation protection for the electronics or sound proofing on the dismantled ovens. Just a large cheap fan bolted into a small cavity at the top of the oven under the controls.

It looks as though this is a modification which has been added without a lot of thought. For example lots of people complain online that the cooling fan makes it too noisy to eat socially in their new open plan kitchens - as the cooling fan comes on when the oven is switched on and stays on for for an extended period after the oven is switched off, cooling it down. They did not hear it functioning before buying or would have sought a quieter one.

We are staying in a barn conversion done two years ago, open plan, with kitchen one end and dining table the other end, overall length around 30 feet. As soon as you switch on the Smeg slide under oven, the cooling fan starts and is so noisy you can hear it quite clearly at the dining table over 20 feet away. Manufacturers seem to have ignored this as an issue.( I wonder how they silence the noise of all the oven cooling fans going in the GBBO tent )

For those interested, Bosch 800 and Rangemaster come in for a lot of criticism online for noisy cooling fans with lots of people saying when they report this Rangemaster just tells them no one else has complained. But there are lots of complaints about other manufacturers' noisy ovens too.

Think I will stick with my old mechanical oven for the time being. Probably take people asking for quieter ovens when this current generation of ovens is replaced, before anything changes.