On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 11:10:10 +0000, Huge wrote:

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 10:17:12 +0000, Andy Hall wrote:

On 13 Jan 2006 01:07:12 -0800, wrote:

As you see many Rayburn owners turn them off in the summer and make do
with an ordinary cooker instead. They only need to take a small logical
step to understand that this makes the Rayburn redundant as a cooker. Not
to mention that most Aga owners also have a collection of toasters,
electric kettles, microwaves, baby belling hot plates etc etc to make up
for the deficiencies of the Agas.

That's urban legend.

So much so, in fact, that the three people I know who own Agas all do
this, and the house we rented in Cornwall with an Aga last year also had an electric
hob built it.

In other words, it's not a UL at all.

No, its the best of both worlds.

Its a very efficient heater - much better than a boiler - the thing
produces large quantities of warmth rather than a smaller quanity of hot,
and juding by the exhaust temps (I can put my hand on the iron stovepipe:
My oil boiler can, and has, melted plastic near the balanced flue outlet)
its letting more heat into the house than the boiler would for the same
fuel consumption.

It also keeps running without electricity, and losing that is a fairly
common experience round here.

BUT the last thing you want in summer is to be burning oil to heat the
sparrows..once the kitchen stat starts to click in over 25C its time to bin
the aga.

In spring an autumn its like baseband heating - it dos nearly all the
hoiuse needs and we fire up the CH on a manual basis when it gets chilly.

In summer, we dont use any heating at all,

In winter, everything is on.

Essnetialy for 3 months of the year the house requitres xzero additinal
heat - lighting and electrical use, and sun heat it about 5 deg C over
ambient.

In spring and autimn the additional 800W or so of aga is almost all it
needs - that gives about 10 degres over ambient.

In winter, we need the 3KW or so of CH to raise it about 20C over ambient.