Aga oil cooker diy maintenance

[JM]

I'd welcome any advice on how I can complete the biannual services to an oil-fired aga cooker myself. Any tips from those with diy experience of this?

[Huge]

Sell the Aga and buy a proper cooker.

[Richard]

Consumables Set of wicks, these can last several years before replacement. Oil filter element or replacement assembly. Not needed at every service. Sealant to remake burner/oil pipe connection. Cloths/newspapers to protect surfaces.

Tools Pair of OE spanners for oil pipe union Scrapers to clean out burner pot and oil galleries. Various drill bits and piece of stiff wire to clear burner oil pipe. Heat resistant gloves.

Before turning off the oil supply check the flue is drawing properly while the Aga is still lit. There must be a good flow of air entering the flue at the bottom air break.

With the Aga off lift out the simmering plate to examine the interior flueways. There should be no signs of soot if the Aga has been working properly. If there are sooty deposits you must let the Aga cool right down and do a vacuum job throughout.

Cleaning out the burner pot, oil ways and pipe is straight forward but make sure that you can blow through the burner pipe freely before you put it all back together. The burner foils are self cleaning in a properly set up Aga.

Any questions so far?

Richard.

[Harry Ziman]

There is a little more to it than that IMO. Cleaning out the oil pipe needs to take account of any deposits formed in it - ours is usually drilled out - if we don't get the cooker serviced it blocks and eventually it does not get enough fuel to keep hot. Another key area is the oil feed rates. There are two - the low rate when the thermostat is "off" and a high rate when "on". These can be adjusted in the oil float chamber although I am not sure how. You need to make sure you set the right rates, although they may not need adjusting every time. I have been told that damage can occur if they are set too high.

[The Natural Philosopher]

First of all, annual is all you need.

The only crucial bit is to remove the burner assembly buy disconnecting the pipe that comes from the front centre of the burner compartment, and drill it out to remove the carbon.

Less essential is to lean the burner rings as well of carbon.

Its a good time to smother the aga top with Mr Muscle and use lots of actually muscle to remove the layer of baked on fat from the chip pan.

You should also clean and sweep as much of the flue as you can reach.

Its a good idea to take an allen key to the ring covers to make sure that they are not too slack, and the springs are working to make sure they stay up when raised, and also to check and replace any decorative bits around that area - new chrome tops for example if you are fussy.

After many years, you may need a new starter wick.

Its normally good practice, but not necessary, to measure oil flow rates with the regulator in the 'full' and 'idle' position: If these are wrong, its a sign that the original height of the float chamber has altered (been knocked) or that the pipe work is sludged. You measure using a measuring glass and the second hand on the clock :-) Needless to say provided the 'full' rate is above what is needed to keep it hot when cooking and the 'idle is below what is needed to maintain it on a hot day with no covers open, the thermostat will take care of the actual temperature.

However really, for a basic service (annual) all you NEED to do is to clear the carbon out of the burner and the pipe that feeds it. Use of light grade kerosene rather than the heavier one often sold for boilers, makes build up slower.

I can't be arsed, and fork out the 100 quid that Aga charge. Takes the man almost two hours :-)

But I have watched exactly what he does. See above.

Shame we had to relight it when the foul weather knocked out the leccy, and the weather went all autumnal.

[Steve Firth]

Tap the antiquated pile of shit with a 15lb hammer until it is rendered into manageable units. Take to scrap merchant, buy decent cooker.

[Andy Hall]

Like a gas fired Aga for example. Although both the oil and gas models work very well and produce excellent results.

It may not be the latest technology, but it is a rather effective one.

.andy

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[Steve Firth]

[Aga]

[Andy Hall]

Have you ever actually owned one?

.andy

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[Steve Firth]

Yes, and got rid of it. They may be fine as lower middle class status symbols, but for cooking they are useless. The fact that the owners of Agas are usually piss-poor cooks, that they almost always have a "second" (i.e. primary) cooker, that recipe books have to be created solely to cater to the Aga's "strengths" (i.e. you can't roast, you can only bake, and it is only really suitable for 1930s style cooking - buy Constance Spry and you can cook every stew in the book), that when challenged all Aga owners can say is that it does nice toast, if forced to think hard they may praise rice pudding and err that's it, highlights what an antiquated pile of junk it is.

And if any more wannabee "greens" who cycle and moan about cars have a go about me and my cars I shall shove their monumental fuel-wasting Aga where the sun doesn't shine.

[Andy Hall]

Was it properly maintained? This makes a large difference to performance

I wouldn't know. I don't think that the concept of "class" has much meaning any longer.

Not in my experience, unless you don't know how to cook. Although frankly I find the Aga far more forgiving than the conventional hob and oven that it replaced.

A sweeping generalisation that simply isn't true.

Not true either. The only other means of cooking that we have are a microwave and a barbecue that is occasionally used in the summer.

Recipe books don't "have" to be created because the techniques to use the Aga properly are extremely simple and any conventional recipe and technique can be used with little or no modification.

Recipe books are produced to sell recipe books. Go into any book shop and you will find books on any cooking technique from use of the wok to barbecue and fondue. These are not required to use these cooking techniques but are simply a way to make money.

Absolute rubbish. The Aga does the best roasting of any oven and doesn't dry out the food.

That's complete rubbish as well. You can cook absolutely anything.

I don't need to be challenged. It does nice toast and nice everything else.

That's complete nonsense.

Well... interestingly enough, I calculated and measured the cost of energy used for cooking with the previous cooking arrangement of gas hob and electric oven and compared with what the Aga uses. With everything taken into account, it costs less.

.andy

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[Harry Ziman]

Each to his own - Aga's are great once mastered.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Gas fired agas are definitely the best if you have access to gas. Very low maintenance.

Even the oil ones are more effective than peole think. Agas have been doing better conversion efficiencies than combi condensing boilers for years...

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, its you who talks whereof they know not. At or around the sorts of temperatures at the moment - up t 20 by day, down to 8 by night, one aga supplies all the heat a well insulated house needs at very high efficiency.

And you can cook on it for free.

[Huge]

I was never very convinced about Agas until we rented a house last year which had one, with no other way to cook.

It was "lovely" coming home on a summer's day to a house at 120 degF. It was nice having to have windows open all the time to get rid of the unwanted hot air. Yes, it dried tea towels and made nice bacon, but it did nothing that a proper cooker couldn't, and belched thousands of cubic feet of unwanted scalding hot air into the house. And it didn't even heat the water.

I'm totally convinced about Agas now. They're crap.

Which is precisely none.

Only if you regard all the hot air you have to vent to the outside as "free".

[The Natural Philosopher]

If you had an antiquated coal fired one, then teh above may be true.

I can most certainly roast. Upper part of upper oven is about 230 C, and I can if required crank it up higher than that.

leavibgf aside dishes, and talking cooking techniques - frying roasting braising, stewing slow cooking, boiling - there is only two things an aga cannot do, if maintained at the suggested temperatures, and those are stir frying and grilling. Oh and microwave cooking, bit there are only a few dishes that microwaves excel at. Scarmbled eggs and steamed puddings mainly.

On the other hand no electric cooker is as efficient thermally, and no gas cooker can touch them as room heaters :-)

I have mad many many good dishes cooked on Agas. I agree that if grilling steaks is all you ever want to do, they are a bit wasted.

An aga won't make a good cook, but a good cook can with the above two exceptions cook anything on an aga.

As to being lower middle calss - I would say not. They are far more the province of the upper middle claases - the nouveau riche parvenues don't aspire to Agas until they have grown sick of their built in chrome plated nightmares and designer kitchesn, and actually learnt to cook.

Its not waht you cook on, its how you copok on it. I was turning out curries on campfires and first rate spaghetti bolgnese on a single gas ring with just a knife and a wooden spoon as implements, long before I got an aga.

If as I say yu just want to heat up pot noodles, thehn its quickert to use an electric kettle. But don't confuse that sort of food with actual cooking.

And, I am sure, if two bit of rocket arranged at right angles with a bit of raw tuna passed under a gas flame and drizzled with urine is your idea of cooking, then you probably are lower middle class and deserve all th food posioning you get.

They don't waste fuel unless they over heat the house. In out case we switch it off when that happens. They are more efficient oil burners than most boilers, as can be deduced from the exhaust flue temperatures.

I am sorry you were not able to actually learn how to cook. On an aga.

I suggest you get a microwave and stick to pre-prepared mulches. In general these are not drizzled with urine, unless you have a senior moment again.

[Huge]

[66 lines snipped]

QED.

[Andy Hall]

I achieve both of those with use of appropriate utensils.

A ridged plate or pan either on the top or in the roasting oven works well for griiling. For stir frying, a cast iron wok, preheated in the roasting oven works well. The job is done before it cools notably

.andy

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[Gordon Henderson]

Hear hear!

Gordon

[Gordon Henderson]

We have an Aga (flat bottomed) wok which works remarkably well, and the top of our oven is more than capable of grilling bacon.

The only thing I wouldn't do is deep fat frying on the hoptplate, but then I've never done any deep fat frying anyway. Chips made in the oven are just as good to eat and far better for you!

Gordon (Stanley owner rather than Aga, but the idea is the same)