Westinghouse WFE619WA

Cautiously optimistic – After cooking with LP gas for 30+ years I had to replace my Eurolec 5 burner all gas stove last month. After trolling through many customer reviews I was not confident about buying ANY brand but needed another stove quickly. Due to limited choice through the local suppliers and after speaking to a couple of gas plumbers, I chose Westinghouse… Read more

because it was Australian made, so parts would be readily available. I prefer to support local businesses when I can - also, if something does go wrong I can discuss the problem face to face with the supplier. I settled on a dual fuel model (still LP gas) because some of the reviews for all-gas cookers were a bit hair-raising.

First impression : pros - Good looking stove, although the quality of materials used was not as good as that of my old stove.

Solid cast iron trivets which allow pots to sit anywhere on the hob without tipping.

cons - Control knobs have no easily discernible markings to show whether the gas is on or off. There is a little raised area

which is hard to see without 20/20 vision, so I placed a black dot with texta on the top of the knob (in the off position).

Practical use : pros - Love the slide out griller, which works well. Fan forced oven cooks evenly and you can hardly hear the fan.

cons - Manual timer stopped working the second day. Not a major disaster, but annoying.

Burner control knobs have only 2 settings - high and low - nothing in between. There is not much difference between

the size of the flame. It is impossible to simmer anything unless you buy a simmer plate to place between the burner

and bottom of saucepan.

Flimsy, aluminium (?) baking trays that bend if you put something heavy on them (eg 4 ramekins of chocolate pudding)

and stain and scratch easily.

Comments: I wish there was an easy way to remove the oven door to facilitate oven cleaning - it's awkward to have to kneel and reach in over the open door. This is an early review and I will post another after 12 months use.

February 5th 2017 Update: Update on earlier review of Westinghouse Stove WFE619WA

It's now 4 months since I had my Westinghouse stove installed.

The manual timer is working fine - it just had to be turned all the way to the end first, then back to the time you want to set. My brother was the first one to use the stove and forgot to tell me that little trick. The timer on my old stove never worked, so I hadn't used one before.

Overall we are very happy with the electric oven - it cooks beautifully and browns evenly. I hope the manufacturer will consider designing a door mechanism in the future which will allow the door to be easily removed for cleaning the oven. The back wall can only be reached (just) when one is kneeling and leaning in over the open door. This puts a great deal of strain on back, shoulders and arms because there is no way to brace yourself unless you lean on the open door - NOT recommended!

As of this week, I finally have a simmer burner (back left - medium) but we believe this has developed due to a fault with the gas supply to that burner. Originally the flame was even all the way round the burner, then it became uneven on one side - to about half the flame length.

Now it is half size all the way round the burner - so voila! - a simmer flame! I've checked the burner to make sure nothing was blocking the path of the gas and it's clean, so have no idea why this has occurred.

The rest of the burners continue to frustrate with very little difference in size between high and low. The only way round it is to use a simmer plate, but you need one for each burner you want to simmer with.

We live out of town, so use LP gas and have no idea if this simmer problem is the same with natural/city gas.