ElectricKit Bottom Oven Running Hot? Here's Why

If you have an ElectricKit Conversion inside your Aga Cooker, you may think your bottom oven is slightly hotter than a traditional model.

In short, your bottom oven will receive heat conductively whenever your top oven is on. Over time, the heat from the middle oven heating element will be pushed down into the oven below.

If you're one of our customers, you'll know that we go into detail about where the heat comes from and the sizes and placements of heating elements during our handover.

Here's a little diagram to show you where the heat comes from. It's a 2-oven model, but the right hand ovens are the same on 3, 4 and 5-oven models too.

You can see the top oven is controlled by two heating elements - one above and one below. Whenever the top oven is on, these two elements engage and heat the oven.

Due to the close proximity, heat will also be pushed into the oven below (even if your bottom oven is turned off).

After around 4 hours, your bottom oven will sit at around 25-35% cooler than whatever temperature your top oven is set to. If you're actively cooking in your top oven, or turning the temperature up, the heating elements will engage more, which means more heat will travel into the oven below.

To reduce this bottom oven temperature, you can temporarily open the bottom oven door to release the built up heat, then place a cold solid shelf at the top of the oven to slow down the heat transfer from the oven above. You should always close the oven door before using the oven.

The bottom oven temperatures are measured at the top of the cast iron oven, so you can move your tray to the lower sets of runners for reduced temperatures. These will decrease temperature by around 8-10c per runner position, as you get closer to the bottom of the oven. When the bottom oven is off, the coolest place is directly on the floor of the cast iron oven.

If you find that your bottom oven is running hotter than the % rule above, try the below:

Has your top oven been used for cooking, or recently turned up in temperature? This will cause a spike in heat transfer.
Do you have any automatic 24/7 timers or 'rest' modes set? These can accidentally run in the background and may be affecting the oven temperatures.
Is your bottom oven turned on? The power icon next to the bottom oven display will be green if it's actively turned on and heating using the lowest oven element. Tap to turn it off if needed.

Here's a test we carried out with the AGA we use everyday in our office.

It's timed to heat the top oven to 180c at 5.30am, then drop into 120c 'rest' from 9pm.

The temperature of the bottom oven is approximately 127c when we arrive in the morning.

Over the course of the day (even without using the top oven at all), the temperature in the bottom oven rises to around 140c by the time we leave the office.

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We're Saltire Cookers.

We specialise in Refurbished Aga Cookers and Electric Aga Conversions to turn older Aga Cookers into efficient, controllable models (without losing the traditional design or radiant heat cooking).

Out of all of our cooker models, the brand new Esse Cookers offer unrivalled cooking experience, and the brand new Everhot Cookers are designed to be 'always on' whilst offering the lowest running costs possible.

We're Saltire Cookers.

We specialise in Refurbished Aga Cookers and Electric Aga Conversions to turn older Aga Cookers into efficient, controllable models (without losing the traditional design or radiant heat cooking).