"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 05/05/2021 18:27, NY wrote:
Anyone who has had a gas oven will be familiar with the concept of a high
gas mark (temperature) giving a higher power (gas flow) than a low one.
In other words, from cold, gas mark 9 followed by gas mark 4 when it's up
to temp will result in the oven getting up to the final temperature of
gas mark 4 quicker than gas mark 4 from the start: a gas "regulo"
controls both power and on/off cycling temperature. I presume once the
oven is at temp, it alternates between virtually off (just enough to keep
the burner alight) and full, in a similar way to an electric oven, but
when it's heating up from cold, the rate of heating is controlled by the
gas mark setting. I presume that's still the case; we've always had an
electric oven, but my parents have gas and I'm basing my comments on how
their oven behaved.

No oven I have ever encountered behaved like that

Maybe my parents' oven was unusual then, and I've extrapolated to thinking
this was how *all* gas ovens behaved. Sorry, if that's the case.

I know that if you lit it (by putting a taper down the lighting hole at the
front of the bottom of the oven), the size of the flame in the burners
varied according to how far round the "regulo" knob was turned. There was no
"full on or barely lit" with no gradation in between. Once it got up to
temperature, *then* there was a sharp change from barely on to full on at
around the temperature it was set to, but when it was cold there was a full
range of flame heights, so starting it on maximum temperature *did* actually
make it heat up quicker - unlike every other appliance which is simply on or
off, so it would make no difference.

This was an oven that dated from 1962 (it was a wedding present to my
parents) and it lasted until the mid 90s when they called out a gas engineer
for some trivial fault and he condemned it as unsafe, so they had to have
fish and chips that night and go looking for a new cooker the following day,
living on microwave meals (no oven, hob or grill) until the new one was
delivered and fitted.

I remember that it originally had a "gas taper" for lighting the oven: this
was a thin flexible hose with a metal burner on the end, which you lit from
the main pilot light (no piezo lighting!) or from a gas hob burner, and then
transferred the little flame to the lighting hole in the oven. That hose got
trapped so many times in the oven door as it hung down on the hinge side of
the door when it was not in use, so it was removed and blanked-off when the
Gas Board were converting everyone's cookers from coal gas to natural gas.