Gas Oven Tripping GFCI

Question

Looking for some quick suggestions if the issue I am facing is electrical or oven related.

I have a gas oven (not sure on age, bought house last year) that for the last month has been tripping my GFCI when I use the oven(not when I use the gas burners). It was plugged into it's own outlet and was tripping the GFCI at the outlet to the side of the oven. I plugged the oven directly into this GFCI outlet, still trips. Had an electrician replace the GFCI outlet, still having the issue.

Now here's the thing, if I plug the outlet in across the kitchen(using heavy duty extension cord), no tripping. This leads me to think it's electrical, but the electrician swore if the GFCI didn't fix it, it's an oven issue. Any ideas? Just don't want to have to pay 2 service call fees if I can avoid it.

Answer 1

A combination oven/cooktop will have separate ignition methods for the burners (cooktop) and the oven.

The burners usually have a simple spark ignition. If your cooktop "clicks" when you turn on a burner, that is the spark ignition, which is totally normal.

The oven may use spark ignition but will often use a a glow bar. If the insulation is wearing out (can happen over time in the heat of an oven) or there is a loose connection, then there may be leakage to ground in the oven igniter/glow bar, tripping the GFCI.

The key is that the oven & cooktop are independent. This is different from the old days where a single pilot light would be used to ignite both the cooktop and the oven. Modern ovens don't use pilot lights because they burn gas - and your money - all the time.

If you can find instructions online for your specific oven, you may be able to remove the igniter/glow bar/etc. and replace it. The catch is that damage may not be obvious, and it is also possible the problem is in the controls and not the igniter or glow bar. But the problem is pretty definitely somewhere in the oven.

Answer 2

If your oven has Spark Module without ground terminal, in this case the one end of the high voltage side connected to neutral (internally in Spark Module) another end of high voltage side is going to spark spark.

With this connection way, the high voltage side current going throw: spark plug - ground wire - neutral wire (lets name it as I1).

The power current is going throw : neutral wire - line wire (lets name it as I2)

So, as you can see the current which is going throw the line is just I2, but the current which is going throw the neutral is sum of I1 + I2.

The GFCI measures current that is going throw the line and neutral, and if it find the difference (I am not sure how much, probably 5 mkA), it decides that some current going throw the Ground due to Ground Fall and brakes line.

So, I assume to fix this problem, it is necessary to have Spark Module with the Ground terminal