Cabinet below integrated oven is charcoal, insulation reqd.?

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Ok, first off, this could be for the Wood forum, but I thought it was more of a question that is specifically concerned with the correct procedure for installing and insulating an oven from the surrounding kitchen cabinets.

The base (bottom) element in a Teba TFA10 integrated oven has stopped working, so I purchased a replacement and had the time today to disconnect and remove the oven from the cabinet space. The oven is basically resting on the cupboard below, and has a shelf above the oven, so it's a fairly snug fit, although the shelf above is merely resting on the control panel section rather than the actual oven casing.

This is what I discovered when I removed the oven from the cabinet:




As you can see, the cupboard top that sits below the oven is quite severely charcoaled!




Now, I'm not sure how long ago the oven was installed, but it seems a bit odd that there is next to no gap between the oven and the cupboard below. The boiler in this house is being replaced this week and has been estimated to be something like 7-10+ years old, so I guess the oven is around the same age...

I found the manual for the oven, but it's more of an operation manual than a service/installation manual. Here is the installation page:




So, it mentions that adequate support is required below the oven, but does not specify any required material for the support, nor air gaps, etc.

I'm not entirely sure what to do at this point. I have a few ideas on what to do:

1) I was thinking possibly I could put a thin sheet of asbestos substitute over the charred cabinet, which wouldn't require any adjustment to the oven position, nor the shelf above.

2) Place a ~6mm sheet of concrete/wood fibreboard on top of the charred cabinet, adjusting the position of the shelf above, and maybe painting any visible fibreboard along the front face.

3) Use some sort of heat shield foil/fabric material (as used in cars, around part of engines, turbos, etc.) This would not require moving the oven and shelf above.

I've lived at this house for just over a year now, and long story short, a lot of the house has been done wrong (e.g. almost all the doors hung the wrong way, swinging into the room) so it wouldn't surprise me if this oven was installed wrong. Although, to be fair, the installation doesn't go against any directions in the manual...

I'm leaning towards the heat-shield fabric, as I've just had a little discussion with a friend who says that the stuff he uses around sections of his engine can resist temperatures up to 800°C. The charred cabinet is a bit of a puzzler though, could I just chip the loose charcoal away and fill it in with wood filler or some kind of general filler?
 
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Well, I went out to B&Q and looked around at the different insulating boards available, a lot of it was 10 or 12.5mm thick, but then I found some Hardiebacker 250 by James Hardie (called Hardiebacker 1/4" in the US)

There was a bit of blurb available and the "non-combustible" property caught my eye. The 6mm thickness seemed ideal for my situation too. At this thickness, apparently it has a thermal resistance R:0.13 ... I don't know if that is a straightforward factor difference between hot and cold sides, but it seems like it'll be suitable if this is the case.

I took the back and bottom panels off the oven, and found out what's gone wrong lol, the base element is all mangled and broken, it probably was touching the panel directly in places. Don't be fooled by the lack of insulation in the photo, it's stuck to the bottom panel (removed).




You can see how twisted and messed up the element is, and this is when I've laid it out nicely lol, it's all broken and barely in one piece (when I moved it after taking the photo it broke into several pieces)




This is what the element is supposed to look like, lol:




I cut the Hardibacker 250 to be pretty much the full width of the cabinet space, with a small ~5mm gap at the back to allow some convection/ventilation at the rear of the oven...




So here's the new base element fitted:




Hooked it all back up, moved the shelf up with the aid of some screw-in shelf supports (the rectangle block type), switched the breaker back on for the cooker, and hey presto, the oven works again :)

Gonna celebrate with a pizza and started watching the new A-Team movie, I'm already laughing, it's hilarious :LOL:

edit: the oven is running steady at 200°C, and with my highly accurate hand test, it's about 30-35° at the centre (hottest area)... so it looks like the Hardibacker 250 stuff is doing its job :)
 

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