Range cooker [H] status codewhat it means

H, sometimes a lower-case h, sitting in a zone display on a hob you have already switched off is the residual heat indicator. It means the glass over that zone is still hot enough to hurt you. Nothing has failed and there is nothing to reset — it clears itself as the surface cools.

It is worth understanding rather than dismissing, because an induction hob is genuinely counterintuitive here. The hob does not heat the glass; it heats the pan, and the glass gets hot because the pan has been conducting heat back down into it. Stoves put that in writing in their own manual. So the surface can look completely inert, sound inert, and still hold enough heat to take skin off, and the character in the display is the only warning you get.

The thing to know about the threshold is that there is no single answer, and the range across the manufacturers in this category is wider than you would expect. Stoves publish that H shows while the glass is above about 60°C and goes out below about 55°C. Belling, on what the safety documentation shows to be the same hob platform, publish that the symbol clears below approximately 45°C. Rangemaster publish 60°C. Leisure and AGA publish no figure at all. Those are all manufacturer figures, several of them from the same year, and we are not going to average them into a number nobody printed — treat H as meaning hot, and read your own manual if you want your own number.

One warning is published by Leisure alone and it is the most useful sentence any manufacturer wrote on this subject: when power is cut off, the residual heat indicator will not light up and does not warn the user against hot cooking zones. So after a power cut, or after somebody has switched the cooker off at the wall, a hob can be dangerously hot with a completely blank display. No other brand researched publishes that caveat, and it applies far more widely than the one badge that admits it.

1. 1

   Keep your hands off the zone until the character clears, and keep children away from the hob. This is exactly the situation the indicator exists for.

2. 2

   If you want the heat, use it. Stoves publish that the residual heat can serve as a temporary warm zone for keeping something warm, and Leisure say the same.

3. 3

   Do not put a tea towel, a chopping board or anything plastic on a zone showing the indicator. A surface hot enough to be flagged is hot enough to scorch or melt what you rest on it.

4. 4

   After a power cut, treat the whole hob as hot regardless of what the display shows, because the indicator does not work without power. Feel for heat with the back of your hand held above the surface rather than touching it.