Rayburn efficiency?

[John]

SNIP

. In another tent I have cooked for

Go riding did you Mary?

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[John]

SNIP

Correct - thats why I suggested a week or more for the test

The loft sounds like a good candidate for leaking heat. Also room sizes and outside wall areas very pertinent. I suggest using a heat loss program such as the Myson or Barlo ones

>

[Mary Fisher]

In Iceland? Yes. But not for the five hours I wanted because Spouse's crumbling hip caused him too much pain.

Mary

[Chris Bacon]

Well, if you read more carefully, and *learn to post properly* then your level of understanding can only increase. HTH.

[S Viemeister]

I have a Rayburn for cooking, heating, and hot water - but I turn it off in the summer.

Sheila

[Donwill]

The subject being " Rayburn efficiency?" what don't you understand about two words and a question mark Don

[Mary Fisher]

LOL! That's one user.

The poster said "many". You're the only one I've heard of. To substantiate his statement he needs to provide more evidence.

I didn't know you had summer, btw ... :-)

Mary

[Huge]

So much so, in fact, that the three people I know who own Agas all do this, and the house we rented in Cornwall with an Aga last year also had an electric hob built it.

In other words, it's not a UL at all.

[The Natural Philosopher]

We have an aga, and turtn it off in summer.

Its a lovely space heater, and it cooks ceratun things better than anything else does, but you need to understand how to get the best out of it.

It has an electric cooker bolted on te side..and we use that for grills and in summer - when grilled meat and salad is more what we eat than stews, roasts and bakes..

I also have a microwave. Nothing cooks scarmbled eggs better than a microwave, or reheats peppered smoke mackerel fillets faster.

We alos have between us 5 cars of various types and on road pereparedness. One, an old 1978 ;androver, is the nearest thing to a motorised wheelbarrow, and has used 2 gallons of petrol this year, carting logs up and down the garden :-)

Horses for courses.

All I can say is that an aga is definitely a step up from the one gas ring that I used to cook quite complex meals on, at college.

Or the eternal barbecue that we learnt to cook everything on, in Africa.

But I accept its limitations as well.

[owdman]

Exactly - and I've seen the same in many houses in fact I don't think I've ever seen an Aga kitchen which didn't have a good range of cooking "accessories". I've been in hundreds of kitchens as part of my job. When we had a Rayburn on it's own it was a complete PITA and we soon added a gas cooker etc but kept the Rayburn as space and water heater and occasional cooker. Not very good as a space heater as was not possible to regulate it. Crap as a cooker.

cheers Jacob

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, its the best of both worlds.

Its a very efficient heater - much better than a boiler - the thing produces large quantities of warmth rather than a smaller quanity of hot, and juding by the exhaust temps (I can put my hand on the iron stovepipe: My oil boiler can, and has, melted plastic near the balanced flue outlet) its letting more heat into the house than the boiler would for the same fuel consumption.

It also keeps running without electricity, and losing that is a fairly common experience round here.

BUT the last thing you want in summer is to be burning oil to heat the sparrows..once the kitchen stat starts to click in over 25C its time to bin the aga.

In spring an autumn its like baseband heating - it dos nearly all the hoiuse needs and we fire up the CH on a manual basis when it gets chilly.

In summer, we dont use any heating at all,

In winter, everything is on.

Essnetialy for 3 months of the year the house requitres xzero additinal heat - lighting and electrical use, and sun heat it about 5 deg C over ambient.

In spring and autimn the additional 800W or so of aga is almost all it needs - that gives about 10 degres over ambient.

In winter, we need the 3KW or so of CH to raise it about 20C over ambient.

[Huge]

Oh, I disagree. I quite enjoyed cooking on an Aga. It just wasn't worth putting up with the kilowatts of waste heat.

[S Viemeister]

The remains of the Gulf Stream give us a rather nice micro-climate! We've seriously considered installing air-conditioning.

Sheila

[Andy Hall]

As I said, it depends on the size of the kitchen. If it's of reasonable size, there is no need to turn off the Aga in the summer.

Some people may choose to do so because, for example, they choose to cook outside instead or are away on holiday.

This past year, we only turned ours off for just over a day to remove the burner for cleaning, but that's it.

On a day like today, when it's cold and drizzling outside, it's a real pleasure to come in from an early morning walk, warm up, dry out and have some toast of unassailable quality prepared on the Aga.

[Andy Hall]

That's curious. The only additional cooking equipment that I have is a small microwave which is seldom used and a gas grill outside which gets occasional use in the summer. Of the many friends and acquaintances that I have with Agas or other storage cookers, I can't think of anyone with notably more than that - simply because it isn't necessary.

Some people do have difficulty in learning the (what are really fairly straightforward) methods of cooking with a storage cooker. It took us a couple of days, and in fact the much greater flexibility and versatility of what can be cooked and where and the quality of the result far exceeds anything that was possible with fan ovens, gas hobs and all the rest of it.

[Andy Hall]

Perhaps you had an old one or something. On our (recent model) gas one with modulating burner, the gas consumption works out to a steady state equivalent of about 700W. Since virtually all of this is released within the envelope of the house, there is no real waste at all.

Contrast this with our former arrangement of a fan oven and gas hob, it could work out that when cooking a complex meal that 10-12kW or more is released from this lot. Then the windows have to be opened wide to maintain a sensible temperature. That's what I call a waste.

[owdman]

My last gas bill shows 336KWh for the quarter which is about 3.3KW per day. Your estimate equals 16.8 KW per day. Thats what I call waste. But anyway the whole point of an Aga is to conserve heat from a solid fuel source which cannot be modulated easily, and was a great improvement on the open fire range. A gas Aga is thus utterly pointless in that the gas in a small cheap conventional cooker (or CH boiler) can be modulated easily and instantly to match demand. You don't need a =A33000 or more cast iron heat sink to save heat - you just turn it on or off.=20

cheers

Jacob

[John]

The icelandic horses are something else aren't they? I have three Icy's and am thoroughly enjoying riding more often now semi-retirement has given me free time. (I should mention I d-i-y fencing and stable repairs just ro stay on topic for the group)

[Andy Hall]

No, because the heat is virtually all used within the house and may be subtracted from the consumption of the other heating systems.

Who said anything about solid fuel?

That depends on whether one thinks laterally or not.

How is a conventional cooker modulated? It's turned on and off.

I have a very good quality heating boiler with an exceptional modulation range of 3kW to 30kW. Most modern boilers only go down to around 7kW and have to be cycled on and off.

The boiler can, of course, modulate up and down relatively quickly to match heating demand. However, it typically does not because the temperature in the house, since it is quite well insulated, does not change that quickly. During a large proportion of the year, it runs at about the 3kW level, seldom cycling off at all. At times, the radiators run at temperatures as low as 40 degrees or so.

THe 700W or so output of the Aga is simply added to the heat from the CH, so that in effect it is an additional heat source for space heating. As a consequence, the CH boiler is running at a lower output than it otherwise would.

In terms of the efficiency of use for space heating, I doubt whether there is much of a difference in terms of what goes out of the flue for either heat source.

Therefore, in effect, the heat produced by the Aga forms part of the space heating, and cooking is free.

Of course, but it is not true to say that this approach to cooking and providing some of the space heating isn't efficient. It is.

[Mary Fisher]

I know lots of Aga owners who only use their Aga, they'd wonderabout the abilities of anyonewho couldn't use them.

Perhaps the cooks aren't up to it?

A poor workman blames his tools.

Mary