Self-cleaning / Pyrolytic oven - Warning

Cassandrai

So I recently had an engineer out to my Smeg self-cleaning/pyrolytic oven. He warned me not to use the self-cleaning/pyrolytic function when the oven was out of warranty. Apparently, pyrolytic self-cleaning has been known to crack the oven door glass, which is not just an inconvenience, but is expensive and messy to replace. I decided I didn't want the hassle of having to replace the glass, so even though I'm well within warranty, I'm going to manually clean my oven in future.

I checked with Smeg, by the way, as I read somewhere that if you manually clean a self-cleaning oven you invalidate the warranty - Smeg say that is not true (for Smeg ovens at least).

Pyrolytic cleaning isn't all that anyway - you still have to clean the oven glass first; take all the grilles etc out and clean them manually; scrape what food you can off the oven, if you don't want to fill your home with acrid smoke (the first time I ran the pyrolytic cleaning function, a neighbour came round to check everything was okay); and it takes a couple of hours to run the programme and then time for it to cool down.

It was actually a relief to return to manual cleaning.

Anyway, take from that what you will. Just thought I'd put it out there.

Alanp

Thanks for that, we’ve just had our kitchen done and we’ve had a neff built in oven with self cleaning so not sure if it’s the same, although it’s got a hide and slide door which we’ve already had out to clean, so I suppose I could replace the glass if I had to

Cassandrai

A hide & slide door sounds a great idea and does sound like it would help if you had to replace the glass yourself. You're also still in warranty so Neff would have to replace it for you for the length of your warranty if you had problems 

I've just been googling to see if there are concerns about self-cleaning ovens, and there do seem to be some beyond the oven door cracking. I've just come across an appliances store that offer a vinegar steam method for cleaning ovens as an alternative to self-cleaning, if you decide against the self-cleaning function. I'm going to try it out. However - Neff are an excellent brand, I think all these problems are possible but unlikely and a new kitchen sounds fabulous 

Hope you spend many lovely hours in there with your new Neff & family

MrsStepford

We were limited by what would fit in the hole so got a Kenwood from Currys. We pay for them to come clean it. 

Sandtree

I have seen the training manuals given to the chaps that do warranty repairs on domestic appliances and particularly the modern items its virtually all "plug in diagnostic tool and look up error code". I am sure he means well but urban myths do spread amongst these guys and if two guys see a similar problem in a fortnight that can quickly become a systemic flaw with the product in their minds. Then the third guy speaks to the fourth one and says he's heard that pyrolytic ovens have got this fundamental issue and then a new fact is born.

No doubt pyrolytic ovens get hot, though relatively cool compared to the 1,400 C of the Mrs' kiln that uses the same powersupply as our oven, and so it will put some stress on the glass and if you've managed to damage the glass then it may be more susceptible to the temperature but often its rapid changes in temp that cause the bigger problems and as you say it takes hours to run the programme.

Thankfully our grill pan, shelves etc are all able to stay in for the pyrolytic clean so personally will keep using the function that I've ultimately paid for 

theonlywayisup

Our Miele pyrolytic oven is nearly 16 years old, well out of warranty and still being blasted on the highest self clean setting.  Still on it's first door. 

john240870

We have a Samsung oven and had the glass door shatter twice when using the Pyrolytic cleaning. First time samsung replace the whole oven, the 2nd time they replaced just the door. Samsung still say that the Pyrolytic cleaning is safe to use.