Why Is There Streakingin My Oven Door Glass?

 
I received the following email
this week:

Hello

I love and have used your bicarbonate
of soda and water oven cleaning  
method.  Totally eco and very easy.

However ..... I now have on the glass
parts of my oven doors some  streaky
marks that look as though they are
internal bicarbonate of soda marks -
they are streaked from the top of the
glass on the oven to the bottom and
are spread across the oven door.

Could you let me know the best way to
deal with this if possible?

ANY advice would be great, as I don't
know how to deal with this.   They are
ugly great streaks of what looks like
dried on baking soda running across
the internal glass.  Visible from
the outside of the oven and inside
of the oven

Kind regards

Mary

Hi Mary,

Thanks for your vivid description
of the streaks of baking soda. It
sounds to me like your oven door has
two layers of glass. In other words,
it sounds like it is double-insulated.

I don't know this. However, using more
than one layer of glass is a common heat-
saving strategy when building houses. Each
extra layer of glass provides just a little
bit more thermal insulation than one layer
alone would provide.

Since modern ovens often have glass doors,
it would make total sense to me that the
manufacturers of ovens employ the same
strategy as manufactures of windows do.
That is to say, they use more than one
layer of glass to trap the heat inside
the oven.

I'm not an expert. However, this makes
sense to me. Layering the glass will
help keep the heat inside the oven and
help keep the glass cool and touchable
on the outside surface the oven door.

It sounds like you sprayed your oven
door and somehow the solution got between
the layers of glass. Again, I'm speculating.

Apparently you are not the first person
to have this problem. Here's what Whirlpool
says on their website:

Why is there streaking in my oven door glass?

The answer that Whirlpool gives seems to indicate
that it is the top of the oven door that is the
problem. They seem to be saying that care must
be used when cleaning the top part of the door.

I've just left my desk to check on our oven. I
was remembering that the top of the door on our
oven has vents.

I'm back in my chair and indeed, our oven does
have vents running across the entire top part of
the door. I suspect that these vents are the
problem. Getting water into these vents is a problem.

Our oven door is a door with a glass window and
it has vents on the top surface of the door. The
vents seem to vent air out of the top part of the
door just above the oven-door handle.

I suspect that this is the problem. These vents
are probably where the water solution entered
your oven door. Do you have vents on top of your
oven door too?

Whirlpool seems to be saying that the only solution
to the problem is to disassemble the door. Another
thing I notice about our oven is that we have philips-
type screws on the top of our door --- so it would seem
that this is possible.

Of course, dissassembling an oven door is not for the
faint of heart. Wisely, Whirlpool recommends that a
qualified person do this.

By the way, our oven also has some streaking between
the leyers of glass. However, it is not baking soda
as we now have a self-cleaning oven and have never
used baking soda to clean it. The streaking I see
is black and looks like some kind of carbon.

I live in a different house now under entirely different
circumstances then when I used baking soda to clean
my oven. I was in California when I cleaned my oven
using baking soda. I'm now back in the state where
I was born and grew up, which is Maine. Again, our oven
in Maine is self-cleaning, unlike the one in California.

I think it is worth noting that baking soda is not the
only source of this kind of streaking. Our oven door
glass is streaked with a black substance. I'm sure
other solutions can also streak the oven door between
glass layers too.

I'm thinking of rewriting the article and suggesting
that people not spray the vents at the top of their
oven doors with the spray bottle. What do you think?
This seems like common sense to me.

This is the first I've heard of this problem. Streaked
glass is something that never occurred to me. When I first
read your email, I was a bit confused. I was thinking,
How is this possible?

Please don't hesitate to post or write back, especially
if you find a solution to your problem.

Ed Abbott