Spaghetti night in your Oviedo kitchen, the big front burner gets the pot, and nothing happens. No glow, no heat, no clicking, just a cold coil and a pot of water with no plans. Meanwhile the other three burners work fine. Or worse, none of them work, the whole cooktop is dead, and dinner is now a phone negotiation.
Electric cooktops are refreshingly honest machines, and the pattern of what died tells you most of the diagnosis before any tools come out. One dead burner points at that burner's own little circuit: the element, its switch, or the connection between them. Everything dead points at power or the control board. This guide works through coil tops, glass tops, and induction, including the one diagnostic trick every coil-top owner should know and the induction "failure" that is actually a cookware problem. Gas burners are a different animal, and we covered the clicking-but-no-flame version in its own article.
One burner dead on a coil cooktop: the swap test
Old-school coil tops come with a built-in diagnostic that costs nothing. The coils unplug. With everything cool, pull the dead burner's coil out of its socket, pull a working coil of the same size from another position, and swap them. Then turn on the position that was dead.
If the borrowed coil heats, the old element was the problem, and a new one runs about $20 to $40 at retail and plugs in like a toaster cord. If the borrowed coil stays cold too, the burner's socket, called the receptacle, or its control switch is the problem. Pull the dead coil back out and look at the receptacle: scorching, melted plastic, or terminals with a burnt sheen are common, because years of pot weight and heat loosen the contact until it arcs. Receptacles and the infinite switches behind the knobs are inexpensive parts, but replacing them means opening the cooktop with the power off, and that is where most people reasonably call it.
One habit protects all of it: seat coils firmly after cleaning day. A half-seated coil arcs at the terminals, and that arc is what cooks receptacles in the first place.
One burner dead on a glass top: no swap, but good clues
Radiant glass tops hide their elements under the surface, so there is no swap test, but the machine still talks. If one burner will not heat and its indicator light also never comes on, the switch side is suspect. If the light comes on but the glass never warms, the radiant element or its limiter has likely failed. On dual-ring burners, one ring dead with the other fine points at the element assembly, since the rings are separate circuits inside it.
Radiant elements are a normal repair, not a reason to shop for a new range. The glass lifts, the element swaps, and the top goes back down, usually within a single visit. What is not normal is a crack in the glass itself: a cracked cooktop over a live element is a stop-using-it problem, because liquids can reach the electrical parts below, and glass replacement is the one repair on this page where the math against a new range gets serious.
Induction: check the pan before you blame the cooktop
Induction cooktops do not make heat, they make a magnetic field that heats the pan directly, and that means they are picky about pans. A pot that is not magnetic, or too small for the zone's sensor, gets ignored: the cooktop beeps, flashes, or just declines, and it looks exactly like a broken burner. The test takes five seconds: stick a fridge magnet to the pan's bottom. Grabs firmly, the pan is induction-ready. Slides off, you found the problem, and the aluminum or copper pan is the patient.
If magnetic pans in the right size still will not register on one zone while others work, that zone's sensor or board section has a real fault. Also worth knowing: many induction tops share power between paired zones, so one zone may limit while its partner runs on boost. That is a feature reading as a bug. The manual's power-sharing diagram, the one nobody reads, settles it.
The whole cooktop is dead: think power, not burners
All burners dead at once almost never means four things failed together. It means the power or the brain. Electric ranges run on 240 volts through a double-pole breaker, and those breakers can half-fail or trip subtly, killing the heavy heating circuits while lights or a display limp along on the surviving leg. If your burners are dead but the clock is alive, that split is the classic sign of one lost leg, either at the breaker or in the range's own wiring. Flip the breaker fully off, firmly on, and retest.
The other everyday culprit is embarrassing and common: the control lock. Most modern cooktops have a child lockout that disables everything, engages from a held button, and survives power cycles. If the display shows a padlock, an L, or "Loc," hold the marked button for a few seconds and dinner is saved. When the breaker checks out and no lock is set, the control board or the wiring between board and elements needs a meter, and that is a visit.
The Florida wrinkle: storms and stove brains
One pattern worth knowing in Central Florida: electric ranges that go strange right after a storm. The heating elements themselves are nearly surge-proof, but the electronic control board running a modern cooktop is not, and summer power flickers leave behind ranges with dead zones, scrambled displays, or lockouts that will not release. If your cooktop's weirdness has a date, and that date matches a thunderstorm, do the full breaker reset first, then mention the storm when you call, because it moves the board up the suspect list and the right part onto the truck. We covered what surges do to appliances, and what is worth protecting, in its own guide.
What you can safely check yourself
- Look for the lock. A padlock icon or Loc on the display means the control lockout is on. Hold the marked button to release it.
- Reset the breaker properly. Full off, then firmly on. A half-tripped double-pole breaker is invisible at a glance and explains the dead-burners-live-clock pattern.
- Run the swap test on coil tops. Same-size coils only, everything cool. It splits the diagnosis in half for free.
- Inspect what you can see. Scorched receptacles on coil tops, cracks on glass tops, and error codes on induction displays are all worth photographing for the phone call.
- Magnet-test your cookware on induction. Before booking anything, confirm the pan grabs a magnet and fills the zone. Half of induction complaints end here.
Where the line sits: anything behind the panels. Receptacles, switches, elements on glass tops, and boards all live next to 240-volt connections, and cooktop wiring that was overheated once is exactly where amateur splices start fires later.
What an electric cooktop repair costs in Orlando
For real numbers, Yale Appliance's 2025 service data puts the average cooking repair at about $214, with most jobs between $180 and $600. Coil elements, receptacles, and infinite switches sit at the bottom of that range, with the parts themselves often $20 to $50 at retail. Radiant elements land mid-range. Boards and glass tops sit at the top, and glass is where we will honestly walk you through repair versus replacement. The diagnostic at QLAMA is $90, waived when we do the repair, with a flat price quoted before work starts. Our range and cooktop repair team in Orlando carries the common elements and switches on the truck.
When to call an Orlando tech
Call when the swap test points past the element, when a glass-top burner stays cold with its light on, when an induction zone rejects proven pans, or when the whole cooktop is dead with the breaker and the lockout ruled out. Call immediately, and stop using the appliance, for a cracked glass top, a burnt smell at any knob, or a breaker that re-trips after reset, because each of those is electricity telling you something specific.
QLAMA Appliance Repair services Orlando, Oviedo, Winter Park, Kissimmee, Sanford, Windermere, Lake Nona, and the surrounding communities within roughly a 30-mile radius of Orlando, residential and commercial.
Common questions about electric stove burners
Why is one burner on my electric stove not working?
On a coil top, it is the element, the receptacle it plugs into, or the control switch, and the swap test tells you which side. On a glass top, a burner whose indicator light never comes on points at the switch, while a lit indicator with no heat points at the radiant element underneath.
Why are all my electric burners dead but the display works?
That split is the classic sign of a lost 240-volt leg: the heavy heating circuits are dead while the electronics run on the surviving side. Reset the double-pole breaker fully off and on. If burners stay dead, the range's power path or control board needs a meter.
Why won't my induction cooktop detect the pan?
Induction only works with magnetic cookware that adequately covers the zone. Test the pan's bottom with a fridge magnet: if it does not grab firmly, the pan is the problem. If proven pans fail on one zone while others work, that zone's sensor or board has a genuine fault.
Can I replace an electric stove burner myself?
A coil element, yes: it unplugs and replugs with the power off and everything cool, and it is one of the few appliance repairs we happily hand to homeowners. Receptacles, switches, radiant elements under glass, and anything behind the panels involve 240-volt wiring and belong with a tech.
Is a glass-top stove worth repairing?
Usually yes for elements and switches, which are mid-priced repairs on a range that is otherwise fine. The exception is the glass itself: a cracked top is both a safety problem and one of the priciest parts on the machine, and that is the point where we run the replacement math with you honestly.
Get all four burners back
Electric cooktops fail in tidy, diagnosable ways: one burner means one small circuit, all burners mean power or brains, and induction usually means the pan. Run the checks that cost nothing, note what you find, and if the answer lives behind the panels, we will bring the element, receptacle, or switch with us and have spaghetti night back on schedule.
Book an appointment online or call us at 561-320-7695. The diagnostic is $90 and gets waived if we do the repair.