Cost of running an oil fired Aga

[bumblebee61]

I know there have been numerous posts about Ages in the past but they all seem a bit out of date. I have rashly made an offer on a house with an oil fired four oven Aga. No room for another cooker to use in warmer months. i am now panicking about the running and maintenance costs. We had an Aga when I was a teenager and i remember it was never hot enough to cook on and my parents had to clean it out every day and keep it ticking over. I did love the heat but it seemed very impractical. I love the look of them but don't want a boiling kitchen in summer and very high fuel bills. What does it cost to run one and what are the pros and cons? I know they are great at warming clothes, heating the house etc, but with two plates, how do you cook several things at once? My fear is we won't be able to get rid of it if it doesn't work out as they cost a fortune to remove I believe and we would have to install a new cooker, would have to be electric as no gas in the village. Advice please?

I have one. We pay about €2,400 a year on oil but that's for heating the house (300 sq m) too. The aga is expensive. We don't always turn it off in summer but the kitchen/house is very warm. Often it is our only heat source. It is a different way of cooking. I recommend buying an aga guide. I found mine useful even though I had grown up with and learned to cook on an aga. I keep mine fairly low because that suits me but my mum keeps hers at the black line (recommended heat) and it is fiercely hot. You can turn it up before cooking a big meal. I use my electric oven a lot for baking whereas mum bakes much more and only uses the aga, so it is possible to only use an aga for cooking but if you don't love it down the line you can always sell it and buy an electric cooker!!

We bought a house with a very old Aga and it gone within 6 months - cost of maintenance was too high. It was a gas and our bills were high. Someone took it away for free but that took hours of me finding someone. It was lovely to cook on though, the plates are only for heating up and then move pans etc to the oven. Kitchen was unbearable in the summer though! Just be wary about it - age, service record, cost of running etc

I'm not sure about an oil ran Aga, but my mum bought a house 10 years ago with a gas ran one, and she ended up turning the Aga off permanently about 6 years ago.
It was just far too expensive to run, even when she turned it off in the summer.

DM doesn't have mains gas where she lives so has to get Calor gas and this made things even more expensive, which I suspect oil would do for yourself too.

She finally got the Aga removed late last year and just last month bought herself an electric range which she'd been saving up for, after years of relying on a small halogen oven, a George Forman grill, a slow cooker and a microwave to cook for a house with at least five people in

Think very carefully.

I absolutely loathe mine and would never have another.

Mine costs about £120 a month to run (two ovens) and £250 a year to service.

I hate cooking on it. It is OK for roasts / casseroles / baked potatoes etc but I find making things like cake a nightmare. I am constantly having to faff around with cold sheets etc to try and get the heat right and often end up with burnt edges.

The minute you lift the lid to use a hotplate the heat drops both on the hotplate and in the oven. That means I can never sear meat or fish properly and even things like pancakes are very hit & miss.

I used to be a reasonably good cook, now I avoid cooking. I have also stopped entertaining simply because I have no control over my ability to produce a meal at a reasonable time.

I even went to Aga cookery lessons, thinking it was me. Everyone else there felt the same.

Other downsides are the fact that my Kitchen is unbearable in Summer (I have nowhere else to put a secondary cooker) and the estimate to remove it was ridiculous. I needed to have the Aga removed, the concrete slad broken out, the kitchen floor redone and find a replacement cooker to fit into a non standard size hole - £4k +

The only upside I can think of is that it does look pretty and dries the clothes.

Hate it, hate it, hate it !!!

I have a 4 oven oil aga. I love it. I will keep it forever. It is literally just an oven (no hot water circuit connected). It keeps the kitchen at a pleasant temp during the colder months. I do turn it off for a couple of months in the summer (and regret it almost immediately as it is great at drying clothes and not having to preheat an oven, as it's always ready to go). I have an old draughty house and it is not unbearable to run it during the summer but possibly if it was a small kitchen you'd want to turn it off. I have a separate induction hob which I use rather than use aga hot plates. I prefer the control of the induction but usually my aga is covered in drying clothes so it is just easier to use hob. I don't find the oven baking different. I also haven't found it too astronomically expensive. I seem to do a 900/1000 litre (£360 ish) top up once a year (10 months use). It needs serviced once a year costs me £60 - 75. When my aga is on I very rarely use my tumble dryer. In my opinion agas are awesome.

Hmm... mixed reviews. It sounds like a Marmite thing. There is no room to put another cooker and the present owner spends about £1600 a year on oil he says. I bet it is higher than that! I just remember my parents had one and it was a nightmare to cook on.

I also discounted anywhere with an aga.

No mains gas doesn't mean no gas cooker - you have an LPG bottle outside. I love this, goodbye crappy electric hob and a year of ,cooking for £35. With electricity prices up 30% in a year this is good.

Agas are just totally different from conventional ovens and to get on with them you need to put aside thoughts of replicating on the Aga the way you cook on a normal oven.

To keep its heat you need to stick to the 80/20 rule - 80% of cooking in the ovens and 20% on the plates. A four oven Aga is particularly good and offers tons of space to cook lots of things at the same time. Boiling potatoes and veg etc - bring to boil on boiling plate (left) then drain most of water, put lid on and put in simmering oven (top left). Perfect veg. The ovens loom small but are very deep so can fit lots in them. You can have a joint and potatoes roasting in top right, pudding cooking in bottom right, veg going in top left and plates warming in bottom left, plus the warming plate on the top to put stuff down on to keep gently warm.

The boiling plate is hot enough to sear meat etc but if you want to conserve heat it can be done on the floor of the roasting oven (top right). Cakes work really well in the baking oven (bottom right). Also - fun fact - you can make a cake in the banking oven with the door open - heat is retained in the walls of the ovens rather than blowing heat around in a fan oven. This means no sudden loss of heat which can make a cake sink when you open door on normal oven. Worry free cake checking!

There are tons and tons of things the Aga is brilliant for. There is nothing I don't like about it. I have no other cooking appliances, and don't turn it off in the summer. But - you have to get to grips with how it works and not use it like a normal oven/hob.

Agree with everything passthecremeeggs wrote. I love our Aga and have completely converted both DH and MIL who had never used one before we bought a house with one, although I grew up with an oil fired one. My mother has never learned to cook on anything other than an Aga or Rayburn.

Every Aga is different and your cooking times and style have to be adjusted to suit. The only time ours gets turned off is for servicing and when we are on holiday for 2 weeks in July. Ours is a 4 oven gas Aga, so not directly comparable but we were without heating (or a boiler) for about 7 months last year, so all gas consumed was by the Aga. Monthly gas bill was about £50. It kept the house warm enough to not be bothered about the lack of heating, even in January. It completely eliminates the need for a tumble dryer, so we don't even have one. The weather in UK is rarely hot enough for long enough for having a hot Aga to cause real issues with overheating kitchens in my experience.

passthecremeeggs brilliant explanation

I've got a 2 oven Aga, had it 22 years, wouldn't swap it for the world.
I remember being told that running costs were £1 per day when it was new, that's increased to whatever the oil price is currently. Wait until summer to fill the tank with cheaper oil, or keep an eye on oil prices to get the best price available.
I've also got independent oil fired central heating which runs from the same tank, so can't differentiate the costs for you.

My engineer said that Aga sell 'regulators' so you can run older models like the newer ones with temperature regulation if you want to investigate that, e.g. programme it to turn it right down if you're out at work then have it warm enough to cook on when you arrive home.

Also if the reason that it's oil fired is because you're off the gas mains, look into whether the area you'll be living in has an oil club. Oil clubs let villages and towns order oil in bulk which keeps the cost down for the supplier so you get a better rate - oil-club.co.uk

I love our Rayburn but we've had to switch it off this year as we can't afford to run it! It costs about £100 per month in oil.