Storm Week: Most of These Appliances Are Not Broken

How to reset Jenn Air refrigerator controls, and everything else, in the week after

Every storm season the same week arrives. The power has been back for a day, and half the kitchen is behaving strangely: an oven that will not start, a refrigerator showing two letters nobody recognizes, a dishwasher that lights up and does nothing, clocks flashing on everything.

A large share of those appliances are not broken. They are reporting — telling you there was an outage, or waiting to be told something they lost when the power went.

Three free steps clear most of it. They take about ten minutes for a whole kitchen.

A JennAir kitchen makes the list longer than most, because more of it is electronic: the cooktop, the downdraft, the wine cellar and the undercounter machines all have a control board that noticed the outage and all of them can look dead while they are only waiting.

Step One: Read the Displays Properly

Before pressing anything, look at what each machine is actually saying.

PO and PF are power-outage notices on this platform. Two letters and no number, which is the giveaway: a failure code on these appliances has a number in it. They mean the appliance recorded that its temperature rose while it had no power — which is useful information about the food and says nothing at all about whether the machine works now.

They clear by pressing and holding the pad the display points at.

In South Florida this is a seasonal job rather than a rare one. Between June and September the same week comes round after every storm that takes the line down, and the reset that worked in July works again in September.

A flashing clock means the time was lost. That is not a problem in itself, and step three explains why it can look like one.

A padlock symbol means a control lock, which an outage does not cause but which people discover during one because they are pressing things they normally do not.

Step Two: One Full Minute at the Breaker

For anything that seems confused rather than merely uninformed:

Off. Sixty seconds. On.

Two details matter, and both are routinely skipped.

The breaker, not the appliance's power button. A built-in machine's own controls do not remove power from the control board — they tell the board to do less.

A full minute. A board stays alive for several seconds after its supply is cut, on the charge stored in its own capacitors. Switch off and straight back on and you have interrupted nothing. This is why so many people say they tried turning it off and on and it did not help; they turned it off and on, and it never actually went off.

What this fixes is a control that has latched — stopped responding with nothing broken behind it, usually after a brownout, a surge, or the ragged supply that comes back before the power properly returns. It is the documented first step for a large share of conditions on this maker's own support base, and it is free.

Step Three: Set the Clocks

The least dramatic step on the page, and the one that fixes the most cooking appliances.

Several ovens and ranges on this platform will not run a timed function until the time of day is set. Delay start, timed bake, self-clean — all of them need a clock to count against. After an outage that value is gone, and an appliance quietly refusing to start a timed cycle is indistinguishable from an appliance that has failed.

So: set every clock in the kitchen before concluding anything. It costs two minutes and it accounts for a genuinely surprising share of the calls that come in during storm week.

Give Refrigeration a Day

Refrigeration needs different patience from everything else.

A cabinet that has been off for hours has a warm interior and no way to fix that except by running. It will run continuously, possibly for most of a day. That is the appliance working, not struggling.

Judge it at twenty-four hours, not at two. By then it should be at temperature and cycling normally.

Two patterns that are worth a call rather than more patience:

• still not cold after a full day of continuous running;
• the freezer recovered and the fresh food side did not — that is an airflow problem, and it is a different diagnosis from an outage.

What Is Actually a Repair

Most of storm week is not. Some of it is, and these are the signs:

The breaker trips when the appliance starts. Stop resetting it. A compressor restarting against pressure, or a damaged one, draws heavily, and repeatedly throwing a breaker onto a short is hard on everything. This is the one item here that is genuinely urgent.

A new noise, or a smell. Particularly anything hot, sharp or electrical.

Dead through all three steps. A machine that is still unresponsive after acknowledging notices, a full minute at the breaker and a clock is a machine with a problem.

One function gone while everything else works. That pattern — the oven bakes but will not broil, the refrigerator cools but the ice maker has stopped — points at surge damage on a board rather than at the outage itself.

Several appliances went odd at the same moment. Say this when you call. It is frequently a supply story rather than four separate failures, and it changes what gets checked first.

Before the Next Storm

• Know your breaker panel and which breaker serves what. The minute-at-the-breaker step is much easier when you are not opening cupboards in the dark.
• Photograph your model plates once, while the power is on. Every conversation about a built-in appliance starts with a number that is behind a door.
• Keep the freezer full. A packed freezer holds its temperature roughly twice as long as a half-empty one, and bottles of water are free.
• A thermometer in each cabinet. Two dollars, and it lets you answer the only question that matters without opening the door.