Gas and electric stove repair for post-war Shoreline kitchens

From 1950 to 1957, Shoreline grew faster than any other part of the Seattle metro, adding about 64% in seven years, and the ramblers from that boom still fill much of Echo Lake, Parkwood, Briarcrest and Meridian Park. Seventy years on, few of those kitchens are original. A typical house has been remodeled once or twice and has had its furnace changed, and sometimes a gas line has been run to the spot where an electric range used to stand, or the other way around. Many are compact, so the range often sits snug between counters and has to be eased out with care before we can reach the connection behind it.

That history gives Shoreline an unusually mixed set of stoves. About half of homes heat with electricity and a little under half with gas, and the stove does not always match the furnace. So we see electric ranges in all-electric homes that never had gas service, electric smoothtops in gas-heated ones, and gas or dual-fuel ranges in remodels. Each combination fails in its own way, and the first part of every visit is working out exactly what is connected behind the stove before we test anything inside it.

A used gas range bought from a home on propane is one of the most common surprises we find in Shoreline. Propane needs smaller orifices than natural gas, so a range that was never converted back produces weak, undersized flames on PSE's natural gas, and the oven can struggle to reach temperature. The fix is a proper conversion: orifices, the oven burner, and the regulator setting, followed by a flame check on every burner. The oven burner's air shutter and each valve's low-flame setting usually need adjusting as well, which is why a proper conversion takes more than a few minutes. Older homes also turn up uncoated brass flexible connectors behind ranges. They are a known weak point, and when we see one we recommend replacing it with a modern coated line. If gas odor ever fills the kitchen, go outside before doing anything else and call PSE at 1-888-225-5773 or 911.

Shoreline's water comes from Seattle Public Utilities west of I-5 and from the North City district to the east, both from the soft Tolt supply, so mineral scale rarely figures in a stove repair here. Shoreline Community College, the Fircrest campus and Hamlin Park make handy landmarks when you give us directions. Electricity is all Seattle City Light, which means the range breaker and the utility are the same everywhere in town; gas service from PSE covers most neighborhoods but not every street.

The city sits under the Puget Sound convergence zone, which dropped 3.5 inches of snow on Shoreline on April 18, 2008. During a storm outage, gas burners may still be usable per your manual, but a glow-bar gas oven will not light until power returns. Between the stations at 148th and 185th and the older streets of Richmond Beach and Innis Arden, we reach most addresses inside a quarter hour.