If you de-power the range by turning off its circuit breaker, then test, the sensor should show no voltage present. Then pull all of the top heating coils and re-power the range. If the sensor indicates that there is no longer a voltage present, then it would seem that a coil has an insulation breakdown inside. You can replace all coils if they are all old, or re-install them one at a time, making runs to the breaker before and after, to find the bad one. Always check with the sensor before handling the range to avoid the consequences of mistakes in breaker use. If the voltage remains with the coils removed and the stove powered, then there is likely a breakdown somewhere within the stove and a professional repair is called for. This could lead to a call for an electrician. Older stoves used neutral for a ground path, and if the neutral to ground bond in the breaker box is not good, the stove shell voltage can float above ground. What concerns me most about this is that the shell should still have been more or less grounded and the voltage present too low to light the sensor. A coil insulation breakdown should trigger the breaker to OFF or blow away the internal short. So after the cause of leakage is fixed, a means of grounding the stove should be addressed. kas

Some ponds are never cleaned and the ponds and its occupants survive very well. However, a large number of ponds are created with high fish densities or are built in locations were the pond receives a great deal of debris over the year. Even if you start out with just a few fish initially, in a healthy pond they will breed to the point that the number of fish will push the environmental limits of your pond and biofilter. The debris may be the result of leaves blowing into the pond, the die-back of vegetative pond plants as well as fish wastes. It is these latter types of conditions that will necessitate you cleaning the pond eventually. The two most likely time points for cleaning are in the fall, to reduce the amount of accumulated muck on the bottom of the pond as you head into winter, or in the spring to remove material accumulated over the winter from leaves blowing into the pond, accumulated fish waste or catkins and similar materials shed by trees as they leaf out. Cleaning in the fall reduces wastes in the bottom of the pond which may turn anaerobic if sufficient oxygen is not available, creating a breeding ground for harmful bacteria, or which may decompose, releasing ammonia and other dangerous chemicals that can be trapped under the ice. The build-up of these pollutants can lead to fish kills over the winter months. While keeping a hole in the ice over winter will help alleviate the accumulation of gases, cleaning the pond before winter sets in will reduce the overall potential for problems. Cleaning the pond in the spring may help reduce diseases and parasites that often occur as the pond and its biology warms up for the summer, as well as reduce the overall availability of nutrients that stimulate algae growth. The following are a few approaches that have been successfully used to clean the pond. 1. If the pond has a bottom drain periodic changes of water (typically 10% per week) have been used to evacuate the accumulated debris from the bottom of the pond. This simple approach minimizes the amount of material that is removed at any one time as well as adds water to the pond on a periodic basis. Care must be taken when adding water to be sure that you have minimized the addition of chlorine and chloramines typically present in many municipal water supplies. This can be done either by pre-treating the water with dechlorination agents or by using a whole-house water filter with an activated carbon cartridge. 2. Using a net such as used in swimming pools is helpful for cleaning out large materials that have settled to the bottom of the pond. However, if there is a very large amount of debris in the pond you should be careful to either remove the fish or use supplemental aeration to avoid creating significant oxygen deprivation due to stirring up anaerobic or large amounts of oxygen-consuming muck. If you notice a rotten egg smell this indicates the presence of hydrogen sulfide. You should immediately stop stirring up the bottom and get the fish out of the water as soon as possible before continuing with the cleaning. 3. You can use a variety of devices for vacuuming the bottom of the pond. Some of these use a garden hose to create a suction through a venturi device. The potential problem with these devices is that the pond may fill up with too much water during a prolonged vacuuming and you may have a potential problem of adding chlorine and chloramines to your pond if you do not pretreat the water. Wet/dry shop vacs, specially those with an attachment for a garden hose to provide a continuous drain, have also been used. These devices may drain a large amount of water from the pond in a short time and therefore it is necessary to either replace the water or use the garden hose to add the water back into the pond through the biofilter. Care must be exercised in reintroducing water taken from the bottom of the pond in that it may be depleted of oxygen as well as have very high suspended sediment levels that may create problems for the fish. A third approach is to use a pump capable of handling a moderate level of solids (such as a sump pump) to pull water from the bottom of the pond and pass it through a device to strain out the majority of the solids and then recirculate the water back into the pond. Filtering materials such as old sweaters, panty hose, etc. have all been used with some success in this approach. In any of these approaches, if using an electrically powered device running on house voltage make sure that you have it plugged into a GFI protected circuit for your own safety. Ronaye, Steve and David

Just an FYI, it is my understanding that all radiant cooktops oscillate in the brightness of the red coils under the glass and that this does not mean that the level of heat is increasing/decreasing but is, rather, to indicate that the burner is in working mode. I could be wrong but I'm sure I read that. Mine oscillate in color intensity but I don't notice any change in actual burner temperature, just how the burner is looking at the moment. Are you sure it is actually lowering/raising the heat level? I have also read that if this is happening and the level of heat is actually changing that the problem is the pans, not the burner. If your pans are not completely flat, they will cause the variance in temperature. You might need new pans, not a new cooktop.

All of your comments are very comforting and I feel pretty confident that the parts are available now that I've looked at the Web. I challenged this man who told me he couldn't find parts and I sent him the website link and he came back with a $299 price parts and labor price. This was all done by text and I have yet to call him back. But the real question is if I get a parts quote of $300 that's half the price of the new range, is that the way to go? I read somewhere that no one should pay to keep an old unit if it costs half as much as a new range. Does that apply in my case? The way I see this now is I can pay half as much as a new one and maybe get a unit that will last me maybe 5 to 10 more years?...And if I chuck the old 1 and take the new 1, I may get if I'm lucky 10 years on the new 1 without trouble. So does it look like it's almost a push? It's really about equal cost? Almost making the decision to just buy the new one just as good a decision except for the excellent points HU made about the cheapness of the newer tech. My fear of the sensi temp coils was lessened when I read on a site that I could use my my enamel covered iron Martha Stewart pot's with no problem... But maybe that too was not trustworthy. I am so much on the fence about this that my biggest gut hunch now is to do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just go limping along with my stove taking a long time to heat my kettle of water, and when I start boiling on the low to simmer setting, just take my pot off the griddle to cool...and call it good