1953 Rayburn conversion solid fuel to bottled gas

[Inger Morris]

Hello - I am new to this newsgroup and hope that someone might have a little bit of information to make hubby happy. We have just got hold of a 1953 Rayburn in original condition - but it is solid fuel. Hubby being a clever old stick and an a spark reckons he can convert to bottled gas. We don't want it oil like our central heating and there are quite a few places that sell oil kits - but we want to convert to bottled gas. Does anyone on here know of any kits or literature. I have found Twyfords do it for you or sell kits to Corgi registered engineers. Any help would be good. Many thanks indeed. Inger

[Inger Morris]

Sorry if this has already appeared - having trouble with BT this weekend so am sending this message again.

[Huge]

Sell it and buy a proper cooker/boiler.

[Harry Ziman]

Why do you want to convert to bottled gas if you already have oil? I assume you mean a permanently installed LPG system and not cylinders - you may find the fuel consumption with cylinders is unattractive.

[Inger Morris]

The Rayburn is solid fuel and we don't want to convert to oil (as central heating is oil) and just wanted the Rayburn in the kitchen with a bit of background heat and the ovens to keep food/plates warm - I shall still cook on my hob and fan oven - so without mains gas thought we would have bottled gas instead. Inger

[Harry Ziman]

It should provide background heat and will certainly keep things warm, but have you considered cooking on it? We found it very easy to adapt to our Aga. I can certainly understand not wanting solid fuel, but I don't think the fuel consumption will be greatly affected by the small amounts of cooking. I would contact Aga-Rayburn and ask them about the fuel consumption levels and estimate how long cylinders will last. I assume you would need to leave it running all the time by the way - if this is not the case then my fears may be misplaced. We leave our Aga (oil) running for months at a time, only shutting it down during long holidays or for servicing.

Hope that is helpful

[John]

Presumably you have in mind a heat source for use during power cuts or running out of oil? I would comment that lpg is a particularly unforgiving fuel in the event of a poor joint. an invisible puddle of gas builds up on the floor until it ignites devastatingly. Also I was informed by a householder who had an lpg Aga with a voracious appetite for gas that he had called Aga in to it only to be assured that twenty pounds a week for gas in 1990 was not considered unusual. They are not built with fuel economy in mind and I'd expect a conversion to be even less efficient than a straight lpg build one. You pays your money and you takes your choice

[Andy Hall]

It's in the technical section on Aga-Rayburn's web site, Inger

We have a natural gas Aga and it uses between 500 and 700W.

However, it is fairly new and possibly the insulation is better than on older models. Also the behaviour of a Rayburn is rather different, because it is expected that it will be run at low burn rate and then turned up for cooking.

http://195.224.169.22/agarayburn/rayburn/fuelconsum.htmOn this basis with cook-only mode, the Cookmaster Plus would get through about 6kg of LPG in 24hrs according to the specs.

The equivalent sized Aga is specfied at around 4kg/24hrs.

However, these are quite generous.

[Harry Ziman]

To be honest I don't know. We have 2 oil fired boilers plus the Aga (which heats half out hot water ... a boiler does the other half - we have 2 hot water circuits) so it is not easy to tell from actual consumption. The Aga is set with two flow rates - low @ 4ml/min and high at 8ml per minute - the thermostat switched between them to maintain temperature. This works out at between 5 and 11 litres of oil per day - between £1 and £2 I guess. From memory 11 gallons per week according to an Aga spec.

It is a great cooker though.

[Harry Ziman]

Does an LPG Rayburn operate without power? Our oil Aga has an electrically operated thermostat and defaults to "low" when the power is off, a significant reduction in temperature.

[John]

I am not sure about the current ranges but I'm fairly certain the version I mentioned had a capillary thermostat mounted onto the gas valve. My memory isn't too good after all this time.

Certainly oil fired Agas had a choice of low/high modulation via a thermostat or a turn up/down control knob on the BM float control box, which while open loop control did give progressive flame modulation to the cook.

[Andy Hall]

The NG Aga does not require an electrical supply unless it's the model with the fan powered small flue. Current model LPG ones are the same. There is a gas valve with capillary thermostat which modulates the burner.

Some Rayburn models have the facility to turn the burner in the cooking part up and down. I am not certain if that involves external power. The heating models with timer obviously do.

[Steve Firth]

But LPG is more expensive than oil.

[Steve Firth]

And my LPG powered cooker uses 13Kg LPG per quarter.

Are you still going to try and defend the Aga/Rayburn/

[Andy Hall]

I don't need to defend anything.

[Steve Firth]

You keep telling yourself that.

[Andy Hall]

As I said - there's no need.

[Steve Firth]

As I said, you keep telling yourself that. Useless for heating, useless for cooking, useless for DHW and now, by your own admission, grossly inefficient.

[Andy Hall]

Don't you have anything better to think about than to attempt to pick silly arguments?

If you don't want to have an Aga or a Rayburn or can't afford one, that's up to you. I enjoy having my Aga. It cooks well and I don't need to use it for hot water.

In the context of total energy used in the house, that which it does use is a minor factor and the majority of the little extraneous energy produced is released within the envelope of the house anyway.

I certainly don't need to justify it to anybody.

[Steve Firth]

You keep telling yourself that.