Jenn-Air has long been a maker of luxury appliances, with their stoves, ranges and ovens being coveted in high-end designer kitchens. One popular model was the SVD48600W, which is a gas-electric combo stove, grill and oven. Complete with a digital display screen on the range top, you may see an "FC" code showing up. It can signal the need for repairs, but you can often sort out the problem with a simple solution.
What is an “FC” Error?
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Although the cooking operations on your Jenn-Air range may be gas-powered, the controls are electric. There are a variety of "F" errors that are all somehow related to the electric panels. The "FC" error refers to issues specifically with the wiring harness or the power relay board.
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Think of it as a communications fault. When controls are trying to communicate with the relay board, which is sort of like a dispatch center, something's happening to muck up the message and confuse those communications. Luckily, your appliance is smart enough to understand that something's gone wonky, so it throws up the FC code to let you know.
Why Is it Happening?
There can be a glitch in the actual mechanics – like a short tripped or some other electric fritz. The circuit boards inside these electrical panels are often not resilient when extreme heat spikes occur. Sometimes, a self-cleaning oven is known to go too far with the heat, for too long, and the radiant heating can damage control panels.
Most of the time, though, it's caused by something called noise. Electrical noise is a complicated concept, because how and why it happens is a bit of an enigma. What it results in is variable voltage or currents, often for reasons unknown, almost always randomly – and always problematically. There are several kinds of electrical noise: thermal noise, flicker noise, shot noise and burst noise. And any noise messes up control circuits by confusing or overloading them.
How Can it Be Fixed?
When your Jenn-Air's "FC" beeping has you on high alert before cooking, you'll need to deal with it first. It's a problem caused by power, and sometimes, all you need to do to change or interrupt an electrical current is to restart it.
The easy fix is to try pressing the "cancel" button. If you're lucky, this will solve the issue right away. But if not, the next solution is to head to your home's circuit breaker panel and turn off the breaker for the stove for at least one full minute.
Turn the breaker back on and return to the stove. The display should be fine after turning the appliance back on. But to make sure, turn on an oven bake cycle and let it run for a few minutes. If the error code doesn't come back on, everything is fine.
If resetting the power to your Jenn-Air appliance didn't help solve the issue, though, and the error code returns, then your internal circuitry could be fried. You may need to replace the power relay board.