On 14 Jan 2006 08:03:11 -0800, wrote:

Andy Hall wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 13:03:17 +0000, Huge wrote:

On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 04:00:01 -0800, owdma wrote:


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

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

[Snippage]


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

Exactly - and I've seen the same in many houses in fact I don't think I've
ever seen an Aga kitchen which didn't have a good range of cooking
"accessories". I've been in hundreds of kitchens as part of my job. When
we had a Rayburn on it's own it was a complete PITA and we soon added a
gas cooker etc but kept the Rayburn as space and water heater and
occasional cooker. Not very good as a space heater as was not possible to
regulate it. Crap as a cooker.

Oh, I disagree. I quite enjoyed cooking on an Aga. It just wasn't worth
putting up with the kilowatts of waste heat.

Perhaps you had an old one or something. On our (recent model) gas
one with modulating burner, the gas consumption works out to a steady
state equivalent of about 700W. Since virtually all of this is
released within the envelope of the house, there is no real waste at
all.

Contrast this with our former arrangement of a fan oven and gas hob,
it could work out that when cooking a complex meal that 10-12kW or
more is released from this lot. Then the windows have to be opened
wide to maintain a sensible temperature. That's what I call a waste.

My last gas bill shows 336KWh for the quarter which is about 3.3KW per
day.
Your estimate equals 16.8 KW per day. Thats what I call waste.

Not if it replaces 16.8KWh of less efficient CH boiler.

But anyway the whole point of an Aga is to conserve heat from a solid
fuel source which cannot be modulated easily, and was a great
improvement on the open fire range. A gas Aga is thus utterly pointless
in that the gas in a small cheap conventional cooker (or CH boiler)
can be modulated easily and instantly to match demand. You don't need a
£3000 or more cast iron heat sink to save heat - you just turn it on
or off.

But agas are better than boilers at producing heat.

That heat level is just about right for spring and autumn to heat almost a
whole medium sized house.

Oil and gas ones are fine...they are a LOT easier to switch on and off too.
Lighting a coal fired aga is vile, and regulating the temperature is almost
impossible.




cheers

Jacob