Is it worth swapping an electric oven for gas?

brig001

vonsworld said:

Thanks for your replies and tips.

My neighbour already uses gas for his central heating. He had a gas cooker until a few years ago, and the old gas pipe is simply capped off behind the electric cooker, so swapping should be straightforward.

Please don't assume this. What was acceptable when the old cooker was installed might not be now - regulations change all the time. To be sure, you should ask a qualified installer

Brian

Farway

brig001 said:

vonsworld said:

Thanks for your replies and tips.

My neighbour already uses gas for his central heating. He had a gas cooker until a few years ago, and the old gas pipe is simply capped off behind the electric cooker, so swapping should be straightforward.

Please don't assume this. What was acceptable when the old cooker was installed might not be now - regulations change all the time. To be sure, you should ask a qualified installer

Brian

Too true, ventilation especially, despite my kitchen having had gas cooker since built in the 60s it would fail, no permanent ventilation, like an air brick. Opening a window doesn’t count

MattMattMattUK

Vesmari said:

i am only going by the manual for the oven, no idea where else to check, neither i can estimate it accurately. the model is AEG u7101

It is very difficult to estimate total usage over a cooking cycle accurately as there is a high draw during initial warm up, which then drops off quite significantly, with a smaller sustaining draw, as well as boosts if the temperature changes too much which can happen due to opening the door. 

As a rough guide running an oven at 200c for an hour uses around 2kWh of electricity, but running it for half an hour at 200c uses more than half that amount, and running it for two hours uses less than double. The exact specifics depend on the oven, the installation location, ambient temperature, the target temperature, the mass of the food being cooked, the number of shelves, baking trays inside etc. 

A rough rule of thumb would be a kWh every half hour, but with that varying wildly in reality, a rate which is roughly in line with an air fryer. 

badger09

vonsworld said:

Thanks for your replies and tips.

My neighbour already uses gas for his central heating. He had a gas cooker until a few years ago, and the old gas pipe is simply capped off behind the electric cooker, so swapping should be straightforward.

He has a smart meter, so I'll ask him to work our how much he actually spends using his electric cooker, my guess is about 1Kwh each day, so around 28p/day or £102/year, but it may be more!  That cost of course will also rise more in October. 

We can then work out how long it would take him to recoup the cost of replacing his cooker.

Alternatively a mini oven sounds like a good idea, since at the moment he is using a full sized oven to cook mainly small items.

Does your neighbour cook meals from scratch every night? Does he have a freezer? If so, it would make sense for him to batch cook say 4 portions wherever possible & freeze individual portions. That way, the whole oven is being used, but only for 1/4 of the time. Once defrosted, meals can be reheated in microwave