Drop-In Ranges for Dummies

Drop-in range

Everywhere you look you find misleading terms and descriptions. Take the word "minerality," beloved (for a few months not that long ago) by wine snobs everywhere: it doesn't mean that the insouciant little wine you'd just spit into your bucket was – literally – on the rocks, it means that it had an earthy character. That's probably in hopes of getting the taster to wax elegant on terroir. Well, appliances also have misleading terminology, and eHow.com's Owen E. Richason IV (previously featured in these pages) fell victim to one of those misleading terms when he informed (and we use that word loosely) his readers in a post called "How to Remove a Drop-in Range"¹ (now appearing at Hunker.com).

A little background: ranges come in three flavors: free-standing, slide-in, and drop-in. Drop-ins are designed to look as if they've been lowered into the cabinets from above, hence the name "drop-in." But don't be fooled like Owen was: you don't lower this range into its space, you slide it into a prepared base cabinet space and then cover the front edge of the cabinet with trim that matches the cabinets. But that ain't what Owen thinks...

Owen's work, as is so often the case at the laughingstock of the internet, eHow, quickly reveals his unfamiliarity with all things range-related. Take, for instance, this bit of dumbassery:

"Turn off power to the kitchen or to the breaker dedicated to the drop-in range on the main electrical panel."

Errr, Owen, the circuit for an electric range is ALWAYS a dedicated circuit, 220 volts in the US. Turning off the power to the kitchen does nothing but make it dark in there. Oh: and you don't "turn off the power to [a] breaker," you turn off the power at the breaker by opening the circuit. Owen continues: "Shine a flashlight in the crack between the counter and drop-in range to look for mounting bolts or screws." Owen, you idiot, the whole point of a drop-in range is that there's no crack between the counter and the range: it's lowered onto the countertop to create a continuous surface, which is why it's called a "drop-in"! And then he says to "Open the cabinet doors to find the screw or bolt heads fastened from the cabinetry to the drop-in... Look in each cabinet on either side of the drop-in to get all the mounting screws/bolts."

No, Owen, you're not going to find screws or bolts sticking through the adjacent cabinets. The range rests on a platform and the sole fastener (an anti-tip bracket) can be found concealed behind trim at the base of the range. That's also how you access the leveling legs that will allow you to lift the range slightly above the countertop for removal, a step Richason didn't seem to think important enough to mention. Owen also says to

"...unplug the power cord from the outlet or to [sic] turn off, then unfasten the gas line."

...demonstrating, once again, his unfamiliarity with kitchen appliance installation: an electric range isn't usually plugged in, it's wired into a dedicated junction box. And as a point of clarity, you don't "turn off... the gas line," you turn off the gas to the range and then disconnect the flexible tubing between the range and the gas outlet. Idiot.
About all Richason gets right in this piece is that a drop-in range is heavy and you'll probably need help moving it. We think telling someone how to perform a serious DIY task involving electrical current and/or natural gas lines without some sort of background experience is, well, stupid – dangerously stupid. That's good enough for our Dumbass of the Day committee to award Richason his fourth trophy. Way to go, Owen IV!

¹ The original has been sent to a rewite specialist (we'll get to that one later) by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_7976791_remove-dropin-range.html

copyright © 2015-2022 scmrak

DD - APPLIANCES