Second hand Aga or Rayburn - advice please!

Frugal_Fox

Firstly - I'm hoping this is in the right area, I ummed and ahhed over where to post it (having also done a search first too )

We live in a mid-terrace railway cottage/house, and I've always fancied an Aga or Rayburn for our house. A new Aga would cost in excess of £7,000 and that really isn't realistic. I know companies such as Aga-Twyford deal in second hand ones, but they are still around the £3 -£4,000 mark - still more than I want to spend.

Ebay have some from as little as £200 starting price. Naturally at this end they are often rather old models, often cosmetically battered, and often converted from solid fuel to either gas or oil. I'm aware I'd need to get someone to dismantle, re-locate and then re-commission the Aga or Rayburn, and obviously would need to factor those costs in. My question (which I'm finally getting to - sorry for the rambling essay!) would be what models should I look to avoid? What problems are there likely to be at this end - are some parts for certain models now obselete?

I've read that a solid fuel model converted to either gas or electric means that it's warming oven often burns at a lower heat that was originally intended and thus increases cooking time etc, any other things to look out for/consider?

Also it won't need to run heating (I know an Aga can't anyway) as we have a condensing boiler, but is it better to go for an Aga or a Rayburn? I'm at home all day - should I contemplate a solid fuel one or go for gas?

The Aga or Rayburn would be our only source of cooking - ie, we would not have another oven or hob.

Realistically I could stretch to about £500 for the oven, knowing that I've also got the dismantling costs plus relocation and recommissioning costs. Am I even mad to be looking at this?

My current cooker is a Belling range cooker (gas) that I've never been pleased with, and will realistically need replacing in a couple of years, I want an oven that lasts.

Any advice gratefully received.
Thanks
FF

EDITED TO ADD: I'm aware that my signature and my request for an Aga/Rayburn is a bit at odds with each other, but my thinking is, is that if I'm going to be spending £500 + on a new range cooker, I'd rather spend a little more and get the cooker I've always wanted, that is made to last and won't end up on some landfill after 10 or so years.

nesssie1702

Given that an Aga or Rayburn is made of cast iron, you'll need to ensure that your kitchen floor will be able to cope with the weight of the stove.

While I don't have a stove at the moment, I have had experience of living with the solid fuel variety and there are a couple of factors that you really need to give some consideration to. Is there a chimney in the kitchen? If not and you decide to go with a solid fuel stove you'll need to install a flue and that will require building control permission (you'll need a Building Warrant). The other factor with solid fuel is setting the fire daily and gathering and disposing of the ashes..... All time consuming stuff.

I've no experience of gas fired stoves, so no use with that I'm afraid Have you tried to contact a local gas fitter to get their opinion?

HTH

jcr16

My parents got their aga for £100 20 years ago. someone they knew was throwing it out. It is about 40 maybe more years old. Cream solid fuel. Well was solid fuel been converted to gas, as when my dad had his tripple heart by pass he was no longer able to lift the coal shuttle thingy.

Mum and dads heats the water and the house due to it being so warm. They are havign centrel heating fitted this week and was told they could connect it all together, somehow. but have chosen not too( i don't understand it)

My parents floor is concrete with bitcamum on it as the base.
the guy selling it dismantled and it came in about a million piece's. WAs very very heavy. They then used an aga recommend guy who came in and rebuilt it and connected it all back together. unsure of how much this cost. but u can move an aga in one piece i doubt.

Mum and dad get it serviced once a year at a cost of about £60-£70. They have only ever 2 prob's. 1st when it was very very windy it was a struggle to keep the aga temp down and 2 the thermometer broke and had issues so it never been mended.

If i was too buy one then i would instantly go for an older one. not mainly due to cost. but due to the fact years ago things were built to last and i love the character of the older ones.

You can get them re-enamlled if the paint has chipped although completly unsure of the cost i would imagine a few hundred.

if u got any more q's i'd be happy to answer them or i'll ask my mum.

Frugal_Fox

Hi, thanks for your replies.

In answer to the first - we have a quarry tiled floor (original, that we found after 'digging' up the concrete screed) so this should be fine for the weight. We do have a chimney breast in the kitchen, albeit not open, so could have the flue directly into that. Would probably need it looking at and even lined. Ashes - I'd need to check whether I can put them in the household refuse (once cold naturally!) or look to taking them down the allotment.

I too prefer the look of the older models and also believe they were made better years ago

Still don't know whether to go solid fuel or gas, I might see if I can visit my local aga shop and speak to the people there to see what factors I need to consider and try to avoid being sucked in by all the gleaming shiny bright enamel of the new ones.... :rotfl:

jcr16

i think it cost my parents around the £200 mark to get it convertted to gas. this must of been about 10 + years ago now tho.

mouseymousey99

Just a quickie that may help somewhere...my friend has an aga and recently had to have it moved as the kitchen was being redone. Please make sure you are insured for this if/when you invest in one (moving it). Part of the bottom of it broke (eeek £600):eek:

rachbc

We toyed breifly with the idea when our neighbours offered us theirs for free as they decide that standing in the kitchen burning fivers would be a better way if cooking their dinner! But to get it moved and intsalled was going to be over £500, and then dh checked the running costs on the aga website and the idea was banished forever!

juliav50

Hi Frugal Fox, Really DO check out the running costs, a gas one is a lot to run, I know, we had ( a new) one in our big Victorian house a few years ago. Depends on what you want it for and whether your house is small enough for it to run everything, ie water, cooking and heating. Don't know how the solid fuel ones compare on running costs, but they can be a bit tricky to cope with (you have to "riddle" it a couple if times a day to take out ashes, and they are a so and so to re-light!) - we had one of these for years. Also found they made the kitchen dirty, cleaning the tops of cupboards etc would be quite sooty.

You may also find that an Aga makes your kitchen unliveably hot, they radiate a heck of a lot of heat, (much more than the old range your house would probably originally have had) our kitchen was 16' square and had 12 foot ceilings and could still get EXTREMELY hot. An old (small) Rayburn might be a better bet if you are really set on it, but if you have access to the wood, how about a woodburning stove? Smaller and still gives out a lot of heat, and you can get them with cooking ovens and tops. Every day I pass skips full of recyclable/burnable wood and think - if I only had a woodburner........

Cheers, Julia V50

calleyw

Frugal_Fox wrote: »

Also it won't need to run heating (I know an Aga can't anyway)

Umm I believe that they can but you need to have extra bit added to it.

My parents always had a rayburn (poor mans Aga) and my grandparents had a duck egg blue oil fired aga.

Don't forget to add in for servicing costs. If you have a solid fuel you will need to have chimneys swept at least once a year. for an oil fired one it has to be turned off and left for a day to cool and then serviced then re-lit.. So you would be with out it for nearly two days. And there are not a lot of people out there who can service them and they are like gold dust.

During the summer you need another cooker as there no way you want them on.

Neither are cheap to run unless you have solid fuel and can get free wood.


Yours


Calley

anne99

We now have some experience of both an Aga and a Rayburn, both oil-fired and about 30 years old, and the first thing to comment on is the high running costs. With last year's high oil prices, we reckon we are spending getting on for £30 per week. And add to that six-monthly servicing at about £100 minimum a time.

The Aga kept the (large) kitchen pleasantly warm, and cooked beautifully in the hot oven. We'd heard the hype about it cooking using a different kind of heat, and we quickly realised this is true. My favourite was to cook fillets of trout or plaice, etc. on a (very) lightly oiled tray, uncovered, at the very top shelf position. About 8 minutes, and you have a delicious, succulent, perfectly cooked simple piece of heaven. Much better than grilling, as it seemed to cook all through without drying out like it would under a grill. You have to learn whereabouts to position things in the oven, as the heat is quite variable, but at the same time it is remarkably forgiving and I don't think we ever had a disaster, except when I tried to cook apple crumble in the bottom oven and it didn't cook at all. Hot enough for meringues, though.

Someone else commented recently that cooking on the hob is inefficient, and I would agree. You have to keep moving things from the too hot one to the too cool one, and having a whole hotplate exposed (and belching heat) for one pan is wasteful and uncomfortable. You should learn to make more use of the ovens - open roast your vegetables, rather than boil them. (Oh, I'm making my mouth water.) But, for example, making a white sauce for a lasagne, with the constant stirring in a small saucepan leaves you rather hot and bothered.

We have just moved to a house with a Rayburn, and one of the first things we did was add loft insulation to the loft above the kitchen. I'm now beginning to see why there was none there before. With the Rayburn set at normal, the kitchen was roasting, and we could pretty much heat the whole downstairs by leaving the hall door open. We got loads of hot water that was too hot to touch, and it runs a towel rail in the bathroom. The outflow from that (which was still pretty hot) goes up through the attic and back into a header tank. Not a very efficient system. In desperation we have turned the Rayburn right down so the kitchen is bearable, the water doesn't scald you, and you can still cook with it if you don't mind waiting 15 minutes for a kettle to boil...

There are real differences between the two types of range, and the different models produced over the years. It's worth reading the very informative manufacturer's websites to get clued up. The Rayburn can run hot water and central heating, depending on the model; the Aga has less scope for running heating. The Aga is bigger, with bigger ovens and hobs but has more insulation, and is designed to lose less heat to the kitchen. The smaller Rayburn is designed to heat the room more, and our model, which heats water, uses more oil than our previous Aga.

If you want to be economic, or should I say frugal, I think the only kind worth considering would be a solid fuel one, and only if you have a free source of logs, and lots of time for the associated maintenance. With skill, you could keep it lit overnight but it will be pretty cool in the morning until you've stoked it and waited an hour or more for it to come back up to heat to boil a kettle.

You would almost certainly need an alternative cooking appliance for the summer, as it can be unbearably hot, and seem unbearably wasteful, to run it in the hotter months. Not too much problem actually, here in Scotland. It's hardly worth switching it off for two weeks in July.

I am really quite fond of both the ranges we've had - I've not had a 'relationship' with a cooker before. There's something almost like a primeval religion in one's dependence on the mother-figure that is the source of heat and food.

Good luck with your choice, but remember, once they've got one, most people wouldn't want to give it up.