Agas. Do I need one?

[Ladyflip]

Ladies, I need your opinions. We are building an extension and DH and I are arguing about an AGA. He wants one and I don't. In many ways, our house would be perfect for it; we live in the country, he's a farmer, and we have a very old cottage. MIL has a Rayburn, but also has a freestanding cooker for those occasions when the Rayburn is not enough. My preference would be for a dual eyelevel electric oven with a separate gas hob (which will have to be LPG as we have no gas here). DH still swears we should have the Aga.
As I do all most of the cooking, I will get the final say ! But, am I missing a trick here? Should I have the Aga? Please tell me your experiences...

Yes. This is the EU directive on biofuels? I think - at any rate, for oil fired agas it has changed the composition of the fuel, which now has to have an additive. Clogs the oven up more quickly, and therefore the temp goes down.....I notice this about 4 months into each cycle...you could google it, probably.

Of course, own negativity may be prejudiced by the night it went out at 11.30pm...also Xmas eve....and I had to wake DH to break the bad news. Servicing the sodding aga at 1am on Xmas morning in a freezing kitchen kind of broke the romance of it all.

We had one in our last house and I wouldn't have another.

They are just too expensive to run and I'd rather spend that money on other things. I felt I may as well have been putting twenty pound notes into the fire.

Waswondering we are dairy farmers not sheep and calves don't fit into the ovens (unless they have first been converted into a piece of beef ).

Like the idea of the warmth, but was thinking of going with underfloor heating to achieve warm toes and will probably have a woodburner in there as it will be a kitchen/living area.

We have one of these runs the underfloor heating and it's a lot more control able then an Aga. i went to an Aga demo and when I told the bloke I had one, he waxed lyrical to all the Aga owners about how great it was, they looked mighty pissed off every time he turned to me pointing out how easy that particular cooking trick would be with the Heritage's dual burners, thermostat, etc.

How do you iron on an aga?

I lived with one once (rented room in someone's house) I used to cook baked potatoes in it and hang clothes above it but being a student at the time mostly lived off tins of beans.

We got rid of the gas one we inherited in our new house after a year. It was horribly horribly expensive to run. I was never a fan anyway as MIL had one.
We eventually managed to sell ours for about £150 because we dismantled it and included the rebuilding instructions.
The guy from the secondhand aga shop quoted me £200 to get it dismantled and taken away because he would only be able to use it for spare parts as he had a barn full on unwanted agas. He said he wouldn't touch oil ones as noone could afford to run them anymore.
Interestingly we were back in Northern Ireland and my uncle who is a farmer had their oil Rayburn switched off. She said they couldn't afford to run it for quite a few years and everyone they know had had their agas/rayburns taken out. So I suppose it depends how rich you are really.
In place of the Aga I got a lovely gas range cooker and a fancy modern woodburner.

I used to have one. Now I don't have one and I totally do not miss it. However, everybody is different. I would weigh the advantages and disadvantages. These are what I consider advantages and disadvantages, others may know more.

Advantages:

• looks really nice
• spacious ovens
• oven is already at temperature, so you never have to wait if you want to bake a pizza/cakes etc.
• brilliant for baking bread/oven dishes
• good for drying clothes
• good if you are cooking using a very large pan
• can heat lots of water
• you can use the bottom oven to dry out fire wood for the fire place (with door open to let steam out)
• warms up the kitchen and room above, so much so, that you can do away with your radiators in these rooms

Disadvantages:

• expensive to buy and install, plus if you want hot water as well then you need a special hot water cylinder with additional outlets (custom made = expensive)
• expensive to run (fuel plus maintenance)
• need special pans, special AGA oventrays, special drying rack, special toaster (might not 'need' them but probably want them)
• very hot during Summer unless you turn it off, but then you need alternative heater for water and a hob
• cost and space for ordinary hob
• AGAs are good for slow cooking, not for quickly cooking a meal, for that you need a gas or induction hob
• AGAs and very young children are not necessarily a good combination (you can use a screen though)
• AGA takes up a lot of space (might be better off with one of those huge gas cookers if you love cooking for lots of people)
• AGAs are not very good if you want to cook several dishes at the same time
• temperature in ovens is not always easy to adjust

how DO you iron on an aga?