CRAP! I left the oven on!!!!!

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Thoreau, Dec 8, 2008.

  1. Thoreau Valued Senior Member

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    3,380
    AHH!!!!! I just left my oven on for 4 days. I cooked pizza Thursday night and I guess I turned the dial over too far and it went to broil. And had to go out of town over the weekend. I just noticed and turned it off.

    Does anyone have a CLUE how much my gas bill might be? I know it varies on location but if anyone has a clue, please tell me.

    Also, if I call the gas company and explain to them what happened, do you think they will make me pay?
     
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  3. Search & Destroy Take one bite at a time Moderator

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    Of course you will pay.
     
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  5. draqon Banned Banned

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    try the bill for the ashes of the house.
     
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  7. CarpetDiem Burnin' hours, season days Registered Senior Member

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    Can't be exact, but ballpark around $25US. Yes, you will have to pay, unless you can prove hardship. I use bottled gas which is easier, as it runs out. I pay about $75 a year for intermittent use. Good luck man. Ring the Gas Co. anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
     
  8. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    Wow...glad you didn't burn the house down.

    My oven scares the shit out of me. It's an old-fashioned gas stove from the 40's-50...with no pilot light. You have to light it with a match each time. Once I had the oven on low, and the flame went out. I stupidly went to re-light it and WHOOOSH! A ball of blue flame enveloped me. After checking to make sure I still had my eyebrows...I shut the gas off.

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    Last edited: Dec 8, 2008
  9. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Depending on your local gas rate, between $0.25-0.30 an hour; if electric, between $0.30 - 0.70 per hour.
     
  10. CarpetDiem Burnin' hours, season days Registered Senior Member

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    LOL Mac! Now that shit is worth fixin', eh!

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  11. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Actually, it is not that expensive. Bless the gods that your only problem is a bit higher bill instead of finding a new home. At least you probably learnt a lesson to check everything before going away for longer period...
     
  12. John99 Banned Banned

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    talk about lucky. no offense but i am glad i dont live in your building though.
     
  13. Thoreau Valued Senior Member

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    LOL! I know. And I just bought my house 4 months ago. That would have majorly sucked had it burnt down.

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  14. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Be grateful you don't have an electric range, they're generally more expensive. It stands to reason. If you pump the gas into your house, you just burn it. But when you pump the fuel into a power plant, they have to convert the heat energy into kinetic energy, then convert the kinetic energy into electrical energy, then run it through a bunch of energy-wasting transformers, then into your house... and your stove converts it right back into heat energy! Hard to think of a more inefficent process!
    You just said that to give us a laugh, right?
    You can't burn your house down with your oven!!! If you leave your oven on and come back after four or six hours, is the wall around the stove even especially hot??? You can't even burn it down by leaving one of the burners on, unless there's some flammable material like a dish towel VERY close by.
    Although there are places in the USA where gas is more expensive. I don't even have gas service in my neighborhood in suburban Maryland, and people in nearby neighborhoods who have it say it's more expensive here so they all have electric stoves and furnaces anyway.

    We have an oil-burning furnace back home in California. Unfortunately we bought a couple of hundred gallons last summer when diesel fuel (basically the same stuff from the same refinery) was $3.50 a gallon, expecting it to go higher. Normally it's fairly economical compared to other energy sources. Most of the time we use wood-burning stoves with catalytic converters for heat, because we live in a rural county and firewood is only $200 a cord. But when you get up on a really cold morning you don't want to start a fire and then wait for two or three hours to get warm, you just want to push a button.

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    That's always good advice, but you people really need to understand how your appliances work. You are NOT going to burn your house down by leaving the oven on! Not even if you could somehow jam it into self-cleaning mode!
    As a one-time professional risk management consultant, the reason I nag people for being overly cautious and overstating a risk that is not actually dangerous... is that they may be distracting themselves from other risks that ARE dangerous.

    How old is your water heater and when's the last time a plumber inspected it? Those things can flood your house and cause thousands of dollars in damage, even tens of thousands if you're away for a long time.

    How old is your wiring? Have you got unshielded twisted-pair wiring in your ceiling, so if the support on a hanging lamp slowly gives way, it puts stress on the wire where it comes over the edge and could eventually work itself bare?

    Are all the outlets in your kitchen, bathroom, laundry and outdoors ground-fault protected? Of course that kind of accident isn't so likely to burn your house down... it can just kill you.
     
  15. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    Recently, an oven caught fire in my apt complex & it would have burned that apt if not for someone driving by seeing the smoke pouring out a window & coming into the clubhouse to tell me & me & the maintenance woman being levelheaded.
    Aside from your other advice, what you say about ovens, at best, is like saying "Don't worry, the gun isn't loaded."
    Other things may be more dangerous but leaving an oven on & unattended is dangerous.
    1111
     
  16. RubiksMaster Real eyes realize real lies Registered Senior Member

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    4 days!?

    I thought I was bad for once leaving my oven on overnight.
     
  17. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    ovens are reasonably safe unless you do something stupid like store petrol in it. The bigger risk actually is that the flame blows out, if that happens with the gas still pouring into it the house would have been a time bomb waiting for a spark so your lucky in that regard. For this reason alone electric ovens are safer but gas is better for the enviroment and alot cheeper
     
  18. blondie Registered Member

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    1
    Left my oven on over 48 hours at 350 degrees

    Ok, so I'm new to cooking, and I made a huge mistake. I have my very first apartment and I was baking pork tenderloin Friday afternoon at 350 degrees. I was in a hurry, so when I took the meat out of the oven, silly me didn't turn the oven off. I left for the weekend. I came back tonight, Sunday night, to a very hot apartment. I freaked out and turned the oven off, but my floor is still hot and so is everything around the oven. I know I'm lucky that nothing caught on fire, but I'm concerned that I may have problems in the future. It's not going to spark during the night and cause a fire, is it? Or next time I use the oven, it's not going to explode? I'm kinda freaked out right now.
     
  19. Cifo Day destroys the night, Registered Senior Member

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    You being alive, I'll assume your house is ventilated enough (whether you want it to be or not) that enough of the exhaust fumes escaped during your marathon absentee broiling session. I don't exactly know about modern ovens, but I suppose that, if the flame went out (due to the depleted oxygen), then the oven would have turned itself off. True?

    I cook almost everything using a microwave, even things like scrambled eggs, pancakes and French toast. People chuckle at this poor bachelor and his microwave, but it's hard to leave it running by mistake because it makes just enough noise to let you know it's running.

    That's what silent appliances (and electric cars) need ... a small, pleasant artificial hum to let you know it's running. What are we talking ... $1 worth of electronics, including a tiny piezoelectric buzzer. Forget the red indicator lights, what's needed for gas and electric stoves/ovens need is what's called an "audible alarm".
     
  20. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    >but you people really need to understand how your appliances work. You are NOT going to burn your house down by leaving the oven on! Not even if you could somehow jam it into self-cleaning mode!

    If you have a big enough food in the oven (turkey anyone?), it can catch fire and that fire can blow the gas. Ask a fireman how many ovenfires they have put out in the last 3 months...
     
  21. elte Valued Senior Member

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    1,345
    Blondie,
    once everything cooled down, the future risk likely returned to its normal low level.

    Cifo,
    everything gets microwaved here, too. It is a lot more energy efficient. My living quarters are tight, and the microwave oven doesn't raise the room air temperature very much.
     
  22. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    13,105
    Ah but how are cops suppose to sneak up on you on a Sedgeway and go "Boo!"?
     
  23. convivial Registered Senior Member

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    You mean kinda like Dormammu?

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    I'd like to think that conversation would go like this:
    MZ3Boy84: ... and it was on for four whole days! It was a total accident, though.
    Gas man: Oh, that sucks. Don't worry, we won't charge you for that.
    MZ3Boy84: Really?!
    Gas man: No.
    MZ3Boy84: Aww :-(

    oneoneoneone!

    I don't have an answer to your question, but welcome to SF~~
     

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