Wiring a Wall Oven for Dummies

Sample oven wiring diagram (220V)

A lot of homeowners try to save cash by doing their own home repairs and, in some cases, remodeling work. Some of them are pretty good at it; others, not so much. Most people are confident about tackling carpentry, fewer will take on plumbing, and fewer still have the courage to perform even simple electrical work. You don't need to be a genius to connect wires, but it's a good idea to have some idea of what you're doing. That, unfortunately, was not the case with HomeSteady.com freelancer Martin Adamovic when she posted "How to Wire an Electric Oven,"¹ back in the days when she called herself "TysonG."

Tyson/Martin found a couple of forums – yes, forums (a source that Demand Media later forbade as a "reference") – and cobbled together some sort of answer. It's strange that the steps she outlines in her instructions aren't even covered in the forum posts, suggesting that she found installation instructions somewhere else and reworded them. Sadly, she botched the rewording because (as one might expect of a "sports journalist") she had no earthly idea what she was talking about.

Here: see what we mean... "As long as you follow a few key pieces of advice, you will be able to connect the oven to your electrical grid safely and effectively." – Ummm, Martin? Houses don't have an "electrical grid." "Remove the screws from the connector (strain relief) and put the "wings" (the separations in the wire) into the access hole." – Cute: she didn't know what "strain relief" means... and what's this crap about "wings," anyway? "Loosen terminal screws. Feed a wire underneath the assigned terminal and fasten it in place by tightening the screw again." – WTF is an "assigned terminal"?

• "Connect the white wire to the middle terminal. Connect the black wire to either the left or right terminal and the red wire to the remaining terminal. Either wire can be connected to the left or right terminal as long as they are both connected." – Ummm, Martin? Tyson? What are you going to do where there are four wires in the supply circuit? [Hint: red to red, black to black, white to white, green (or bare) to green (or bare)]

This is what you get when ignorant freelancers attempt to reword instructions they don't understand. It's bad enough when the results aren't dangerous – a possibility of fire or electric shock – but allowing bullshit like this to stand for ever eight years, as Demand Media / Leaf Group has done, could be considered negligent by some.

Well, it might be criminal except that just about everyone knows that eHow.com (and HomeSteady) crap was written by freelancers like our Dumbass of the Day, and clueless "communications" majors (or business majors like Martin / Tyson) can't be trusted.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_6139874_wire-electric-oven.html

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