Rayburn/Aga Information Wanted

[Anfield]

I am renovating a three bed-roomed cottage, and are thinking about installing a Rayburn (or similar) solid fuel cooker and heating system. It is envisaged that the system will provide heat for up to 9 “average” sized radiators plus normal Rayburn cooking facilities.

Before committing myself to this we would welcome information from fellow org members as regards best type of fuel and approximate running costs.

Any information would be gratefully received

[teenybash]

I have an Esse Premier, similar to a Rayburn which heats domestic water and runs 5 radiators at the moment plus all my cooking and baking...more radiators going in sometime. I use approx 4/5 bags of grade 1 coal each month and maybe 1 bag of chippies. Wood is good too. I have found smokeless burns through the grate..................Can't beat solid fuel heating as you can burn pretty much anything including peats, though I don't find the peats here too great.:)

[bekisman]

We had a Rayburn Nouvelle, initially used our own hand-dug peats - bloody hard work for three years - not enough heat to run all the rads + hot water, so over to bog-standard coal from Hunters in Thurso .. eventually went with anthracite - which was an expensive way to go..
Did once use some 'petro coke', but that burnt through the bars!.. Going away for a day or two and coming back to lay the paper, stick, coal, and wait whilst it slowly heated, and having to damp it down in the storms as wind drew it high and boiled over the expansion pipe.

Flogged it to a local Crofter, and put (like Changilass is) in oil-fired. So nice to lie abed on a freezing morning and hear the timer kick in, and not have to go out for the peats/coal in a gale, or getting rid of the ash for all those years.. But Hey it's personal choice!

[Rheghead]

I have just been on a holiday in a cottage where the cooker was an oil-fired Stanley, a bit like a Rayburn, Aga or whatever and although the experience of cooking on it was different and enjoyable in a novel way, it really was a flipping pain. You had to heat the massive thing for at least half an hour before you could cook on it and even when it was hot it didn't do its appearence any justice because it didn't get really hot enough to brown anything. It was either on or off and no heat control. It may have been down to my inexperience but I wouldn't have one of those things in my house. I much prefer something that heats up very quickly even if that just saves fuel costs.

Its ability to heat the radiators was impressive though, I was constantly turning it off while OH was constantly turning it on

[bekisman]

I have just been on a holiday in a cottage where the cooker was an oil-fired Stanley, a bit like a Rayburn, Aga or whatever and although the experience of cooking on it was different and enjoyable in a novel way, it really was a flipping pain. You had to heat the massive thing for at least half an hour before you could cook on it and even when it was hot it didn't do its appearence any justice because it didn't get really hot enough to brown anything. It was either on or off and no heat control. It may have been down to my inexperience but I wouldn't have one of those things in my house. I much prefer something that heats up very quickly even if that just saves fuel costs.

Its ability to heat the radiators was impressive though, I was constantly turning it off while OH was constantly turning it on

Wot? no peats.. Oil!!!!
As I mentioned above, tried the peats and then coal, but ended up using Oil.. good and heats up very quickly..

[John Little]

We used to have a gas aga. It was fun but wasteful of fuel when using LPG. I'd go for oil fired heating next time.

At the moment we have LPG central heating and electric cooker. But we also have a wood burning stove - a Morso. I'm told that it is possible to have this hooked up to the central heating so that it supplements it when the stove is on- it certainly produces a lot of heat and could help warm the house instead of just the living room.

When we move I am going to have a serious look at that possibility.

[Phill]

Rheggers! I'm ashamed of you. With your green credentials you should have been suggesting a ground source pump for heating. :Razz

[orkneycadian]

...the cooker was an oil-fired Stanley, .... it really was a flipping pain. You had to heat the massive thing for at least half an hour before you could cook on it and even when it was hot it didn't do its appearence any justice because it didn't get really hot enough to brown anything.

Marmite machines! Love em or hate em! :lol:

Have one of these as well, and wouldn't part with it for the world. It replaced an old Wellstood which was a pain, but the Stanley is cracking by comparison. Sure, its a different way of working - If you compare it to electric or gas they are poles apart. But once you succumb to its way of working, you would never want gas or even electric again! Folks had a Rayburn so I guess you are born to like them!

Yep, it takes a while to heat up, but if you hook the cooker burner into your house heating control system (i.e. put it on a room stat, so that it comes on for kitchen heating, as well as cooking), then most of the time its somewhere between warm and hot already. Just gone through to the kitchen after a rather late start, slid the kettle over to the hotplate, and the waters boiling in less time than it takes an electric kettle to boil!

Compared to the ~10-12 kW that a typical electric cooker can produce, or the 12-14 kW that even a so called "range style" gas cooker can conjure up, the 20 kW that the Stanley cooker burner can knock out is in a different league, once indeed it is hot!

On off control doesn't exist on it - You have to master the "hot end / cool end" of the hotplate technique and move the pots around to put them on hotter or cooler bits of cast iron. Sounds a hassle, but a piece of cake when you get the hang of it. Same in the oven department. Hotter at the top, cooler at the bottom. Bottom oven cooler still. Just move the stuff around to put it in the right temperature. You don't get too hung up on what the temperature actually is - Degrees tend to give way to cool, hot and very hot, and you adjust the times accordingly. In all, it becomes a comfortably vague way of cooking!

I've found it the most forgiving cooker I have even worked with - For reasons I cannot fathom, you can shove something in the oven to cook (like a pot of stew or a bit of pot roast), and leave it in there for anything between an hour or 2, or a day or 2, and it'll come to no harm. Its no bother to go away and leave something cooking in it, and come back 3 hours later than planned, and still sit down to a delicious tea!

The Wellstood I had before was run on either peats or coal, and was more of a pain I must confess. Unlike the oil fired Stanley, nipping off for the day and coming back to tea cooked was a bit more hit or miss. I would suggest that to get the best from a solid fuel one, you would need to be home abouts most of the time so that it can get tended to as required. If you are off out first thing in the morning, and no back till night, then something more automatic may be better. Bear in mind that if you want to take the heat out of it for 9 "averge sized radiators" you need to put the corresponding amount of fuel into it. Damping it down with dross twice a day whilst you go out to work won't provide enough energy for all those radiators, so it will need fuelling.

Aside from its abilities in cooking and heating, the fringe benefits are about endless....


Making toast on the hotplate - Far better than toaster or grill toast!
Setting the home brew kirn beside to keep it warm when its fermenting
Drying metal dishes and baking trays on the rack above after washing so they don't go rusty
Drying out things in or near the bottom oven - Anything ranging from electric motors that have gotten damp to boots to kittens, lambs or any other miscellaneous peedie hypothermic animals!
Keeping the teapot warm without having to knit a tea cosy!
Drying out bits of paper that have gotten wet and soggy, over the tops of the hotplate lids
Melting down old candle wax and making new container candles with the stuff that seems to evade burning!
Defrosting stuff super quick by putting it on an iron skillet and setting it just on the cool end of the cooker, near the flue bend
Hanging the towels in front of it to dry...


.... The list goes on and on.....

Before getting the wind turbine up, this Stanley would get through about 4 litres of oil a day on average throughout the year. Thats doing the heating of a 3 bedroom farmhouse (7 radiators plus the cooker itself heating the kitchen)as well as the hot water and the cooking. Nowadays, I'm not sure what it is, as its a year since oil was last delivered (1100 litres) and the tank is still pretty full. It looks like it is going to be sometime before the next oil delivery is needed, and I can work out the daily average consumption. Nowadays, the Stanley mainly does the cooking, as the turbine is doing the heating and hot water. It is a handy heating backup though when the wind goes down.

Given the cost of a "proper" cooker like this, I would heartily reccomend you get some experience of one in action before spending money. If, as a Marmite machine, you turn out to hate it, its a lot of money! Aga / Rayburn shops do demonstration days if you can't chum up a friend to let you loose on theirs for the day! The Aga Shop in Inverness (http://www.aga-web.co.uk/scotland_inverness.asp) list some upcoming open day / evening events on their webpage that would be well worth going to to get familiar first!

[orkneycadian]

P.S. Forgot to mention the browning that I meant to to begin with! With 20 kW of heat licking the underside of the hot plate, it can become the most efficient browner I have seen! I can put steak on in the frying pan, 60 seconds on each side, and it does the most perfect job of deep brown steak on the outside, lovely and rare inside. Then shove it in the bottom oven for 5 or 10 minutes to rest whilst you cook the chips and "Steak Perfection"!

[orkneycadian]

A parallel thread on cooker hood repairs has minded me on about another advantage - Cooker hood not required! Reason being that much of the things you cook on the hob or rings of a "standard cooker" you can do as well, if not better in the oven of a cast iron one. Root vegetables, like tatties, neeps and carrots I steam in a cast iron pot in the oven with just a peedie grain of water. No pots boiling on the hotplate generating steam. Any steam that gets produced in the oven gets sooked up the lum.

I always intended to build a canopy style cooker hood when doing up the kitchen, but 11 years on, have long since realised that it is not required!

[Beat Bug]

Wouldn't be without my oil fired Stanley! It cooks, heats the house, and produces endless hot water! Great for slow cooking, and excellent for drying herbs! And it's proved more efficient than the old oil fired Rayburn we had in our last house, which only cooked and produced hot water.