Hello Everyone, As some of these posts are over 20 years old, this reply may not be useful; however we would have been extremely grate-ful (pardon the pun), for any information on our old 1955 AGA when we first inherited it. This response is for anyone in the unlikely position to have the misfortune of buying an old pile with an old solid fuelled AGA. AGA is a b'stard to start!!!!!!! AGA will run on nothing else but COKE. This may be what you in Blighty call anthracite but it is black coal that has been super heated but not ignited to 1500 degrees Celsius in order to drive off the volatile fractions of gas and any sulphur or other unwanted impurities. It is a smokeless fuel and as such produces very little residue when burned at optimum high temperature. We use metallurgic grade that we buy from the steelworks in Whyalla, here on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. Coke has an ignition temperature of about 700 Celsius, so is very difficult to light, as you all know. When we ring our coke dealer, we expect the police to knock on our door and book us for procuring illegal drugs. The only way we have been successful in lighting the blighter is by taking 'sickies' from work and setting up two fire cylinders outside in the wind. We make a mix of BBQ charcoal, fire lighters and small pieces of the coke. We light this and when it is lukewarm, we sit with it and feed it with slivers of wood until the fire has a cheery blaze. Then we get a gas weed-burner or a blowtorch and blast the bejingers out of it intermittently for an hour or so until it makes a particular roaring sound with enough energy for the coke to ignite. We also use the air compressor as a bellows but any bellows will work, even one of those cheap hand wound ones from eBay. When the canister content is red hot (hours later!!!!), it is carefully transported into the kitchen and poured in to the clean barrel of AGA. This is very important as the air must be able to pass freely through the grate always, or the fire chokes. Next phase is that the air hole under the fire box is stuffed with a woollen cloth, the round plug on the top plate is turned over and the rectangular flue base plate is opened slightly. (a note on this here: our AGA had been converted to run unsuccessfully on oil in the 1970s and as well as having the oil burner installed, it had also had this flue sealed up. In order to clean the flue, we had to remove the old sealant and free this cover up, revealing an oily dusty sooty mess that was the legacy of the ill-burning heating oil. This has been a 4 year learning curve for the two of us as there was no useful information on the web at the time, and any that was there was for British AGA users. The AGA dealer in Australia is in Melbourne, which is 1400km away from Tumby Bay where our farm is, and the owner of that store advised me to sell the AGA for scrap metal, rather than resurrect it. He also advised me to buy a new one for $26, 000 plus installation costs. Not sure if there was an agenda here, however, I digress. The next phase involves me lying on the kitchen floor with a hot air blower, poking slivers of kindling into the forks of the grate and blowing them white hot onto the bottom coals. I have used a blow torch for this too, however that nearly ended in disaster as the canister was faulty, I have nothing more to say on that subject, other than...............be very careful!!!!!! Some very nifty footwork of my husband Easy Iain, saved us from going up in smoke. I will never use a blowtorch like that again! Once the bottom coals are glowing, one can arise from the floor and start babying the fire from above every 15 minutes with the blower. It will be slowly getting warmer and eventually you will see the mercury moves to the left on the thermometer. This is the acid test, so to speak and your job then, is to carefully and slowly add a scoop of coke every 15 minutes or so until the top layer is also glowing. As you can imagine, the room will be covered in dust. Our coke is stored out in a huge basket cage made of reinforcing mesh, lined in shade-cloth. This is rinsed by a hose and the rain, to minimise dust. This has helped with the muck. I apologise for the length of this missive, nonetheless, I hope some poor devil finds some useful hints here.
Lucille Legge Lispon, South Australia