Hob

When Dave Freeman did our boat safety certificate examination at the end of last year, he noted that one of the burners on the gas hob was leaking very slightly – not enough to fail it, but an advisory that we should probably do something about it. I asked about repair, and he responded that it would probably be cheaper to buy a new hob. I asked who he would recommend to fit it when I'd bought it, and he said "Me!" So over the winter I researched hobs and found that the obvious replacement would be exactly the same model from New World, who were extremely helpful on the phone. Doing it that way worked out cheaper than getting something via Amazon. Today Dave came to fit it.

Getting the old one out was easy enough. But putting the new one in place was not. It transpired that even though it had the same part number as the old there were some significant differences – not really surprising after twelve years. The main problem was that the protective cover underneath was considerably larger, and wouldn't fit into the hole in the work surface.

In the end we removed both covers and put the old one on the new hob. It needed some bending and an extra hole for one of the screws needed to keep it in place, and was a very tight fit, but Dave finally managed to get it firmly in position.

At that point he decided he certainly wasn't going to take it out again to attach the gas and electricity supplies – it was fitting snugly and needed to be left alone. So the supplies had to be worked on from underneath. Out came the oven and grill!

When everything was connected and ready for testing, he found that the push button ignition switch had previously been supported underneath by the protective cover – which we had removed. The cover from the old hob wasn't big enough and the whole switch was dropping through its hole when pressed. It had a thread but no nut to keep it in place. Fortunately the switch on the old hob did have a nut on its thread, of the right size to fit the new one.

So now Erin Mae has a working, safe hob – and we're ready for tea!