Aga is the boiler?!

[surreygirl1987]

We are considering making an offer on a house (Fixer Upper). When we viewed it, neither we nor the EA could find the boiler. We have just realised that the boiler is probably the aga and this is why we couldn't find it! We know nothing about agas and I'd really just prefer a regular oven (there is a normal oven in the kitchen too). Is it a problem that (if!) the aga is the boiler? Would we have to keep the aga? And if not, put in a whole new boiler?

The same company made Rayburns, which did radiators, and Agas only did hot water to the taps.
The aga thing might be very low maintenance, and might run on mains gas, delivered gas/oil/solid fuel.
So it might be fine.
We inherited one and decided it made the (very large) kitchen too hot in summer, so we did source an alternative for summer.

Our Aga does the hot water , but in the summer ( when we don’t use the Aga ) we have an immersion heater
We have a separate boiler that runs the central heating , we put this in recently
The Aga has been in years , and I’d love to get rid of it , but we’d need to redo the entire kitchen

If you want hot water your choice is keep the aga or put in a new boiler system. This does open up a lot of questions such as which mains services are connected? A friend of mine bought a lovely house to fix up but in the knowledge they would have to look at non mains gas solutions.

Yes agas can be boilers too....you need to ask the current owners. We bought a house with an electric aga and it's very expensive to run but saves us on gas over winter and basically heats the whole bottom floor simply by being on (it doesn't do the water/heating).

A big problem we had is in summer, the kitchen was stifling with it still on so we have installed a second electric oven as well.

Do you know what fuel this one takes?

Oh gosh thanks so much. My husband has has just been doing some research and he thinks it is a mains gas powered rayburn. Does anyone have any experience of the running cost of one of these? It's not a huge kitchen and it is taking up so much space I'd much rather get rid of it but don't know what the consequences of that would be! EA knows nothing and spent 10 mins hunting for non existent boiler. No wonder the house has had no offers so far!

The Rayburn will mean you should you are on the cheapest possible tariff for gas! It will probably give the kitchen a lovely warm floor and because it is on all the time will speed up food prep. There are cookery books available, and courses you/DH can attend. Could be a real benefit, they are expensive to buy.

Thanks, that's good news. It is so massive though! Ah well... we will see if they accept our offer I guess!

We have a Sandyford that does hot water and radiators.. it’s fantastic- we inherited it with the house we moved into in January and like you I was apprehensive but I love it now. It’s simple to use and efficient- we’ve only used £200 of oil so far in six months although we turn the range down to 1 in summer to keep the kitchen cool and the house has an electric shower so we don’t heat the water often, maybe twice a week?

Off topic now as you have figured it out OP but I was going to say that houses with ‘non-existent’ boilers may have back boilers (they are behind gas fires.)

We had a Baxi back boiler and gas fire put in an old house and it was great. Not sure if they are still made/installed.

Many thanks. Lots to think about! I guess if we di get the house we can try to livenwith it for a year or so and see how we get on
... we may love it! And if we hate it, I guess we could just sort something else out.

We have an oil Rayburn 600K. It heats the hot water, does the central heating - all on timers, and I cook with it too. So it doesn't have to be on all the time heating the house like a traditional Aga. We also have solar, the solar when generating over 2KW/h heats the hot water, and in sunnier weather I cook on the electric cooker. In winter, the Rayburn from cooking and the cooling (acts like a storage heater) generates enough heat to heat the kitchen and most of the rest of the house - we usually just do a log fire in the lounge and maybe no central heating is needed this side of Christmas. We can also quickly dry stuff by plonking an airer in front of the Rayburn after it's been on and we have a stove top fan (works off the heat) to speed drying time. We spend far far less on heating/cooking/electricity than anyone else I know with same size house, and then we get feed in tariff money back from the solar (historic rate) which actually pays for all energy we use and some, which is a massive bonus, I shall miss that when the 25 years is up!

We have a Stanley (same group as Aga/Rayburn), oil fired, which does the ch, hw and I cook on it. Wouldn't be without it; great for proving bread, drying things out, no need to clean the inside of the oven ever, as anything that spills can be brushed out later.

The massive radiator in the bathroom acts as a heat sink, so no need to use the tumble dryer in winter as I just stick an airer in front of the radiator and everything dries quickly.

Sorry to keep asking questions, but after doing some digging I've just realised that the EPC rating is E on this property!! No wonder they left that off the marketing details. I didn't realise the certificate is available publicly online.

Under recommendations, it says:

Reccomendation 4: Condensing boiler (separate from the range cooker)

It says it would cost £2200-3000 to install, and that yearly savings would be around £615.

What does this mean please?! That if we bought this house we would need a separate boiler to the aga?

Many thanks!

The Energy performance Certificate / Energy performance rating for your house just tells you how efficient your current energy system (boiler etc) are.

The less efficient the system, the more expensive your bills are.

So, an old boiler or one like the one in the house you are looking at may well be less efficient and therefore more expensive to run than a new boiler.

They recommend a new boiler to
a) make the energy system more efficient
b) save you money in bills.

It is not a requirement, it’s a recommendation.

Thanks- yes, sorry, I understand the concept of the EPC, but I wanted to know what reccomendation 4 means please. So the recommendation is to get a new boiler as the aga one is inefficient?

We would certainly want to do something to sort this, as I really feel the cold and E is a very low rating... it was B just 12 years ago though.

So the recommendation is to get a new boiler as the aga one is inefficient?

Yes! Get a separate boiler instead of using the aga system.

You don’t have to. They are saying that a new one will be more efficient, have a better EP rating and will cost you less. That’s all!

If it's a fixer upper then the E rating might be due to many more factors than the rayburn. What else does the EPC say?

If you feel the cold, you will love the Rayburn! Live with it before you dismiss it as inefficient. Used properly it will become your best friend!

We have just bought a derelict property with a gas aga. It not a boiler also, but this info might be useful:

My 1st problem was finding someone experienced and qualified for agas and gas (likely the same for rayburn). Not all gas trained people are qualified for cookers, and not all aga/rayburn people can touch gas, as its a separate certificate apparently! I'm in the Sth East, near reasonably sized towns, and not rural, but had difficulty finding someone to come to see if it was even worth keeping. Either they weren't gas qualified or didn't travel to where we live! I literally called 8 people and found 1, so might be worth ringing around now, to see IF someone in your area cover gas rayburns.

There is also a thriving 2nd hand market, so if you do decide you don't want it, you could sell it. Whether you sell it yourself, or have a specialist dismantle it first, its up to you. We are adding an extension, so had ours dismantled, and will be put into the new kitchen. I read alot about costs, heating etc. My gas is about 2p/kW whereas electric is 17p/kW, so a gas rayburn is currently the cheapest fuel to use if you do keep it.

I'm yet to actually use the aga, but plan to have a separate oven also. Apparently with modern insulation, more and more people have theirs turned off over the summer now, because it can be too hot. I've also found that rayburns and agas seem to be like marmite- people either love or hate them! best of luck whatever you do.

Meant to say that this is this link to the aga/rayburn info. Unfortunately, the listing for 'Find an engineer' was woefully out of date, and many of the people I called that were listed, didn't do gas, no longer worked on agas or had closed their business years previously! You might have better luck in your area though.

www.agaliving.com/products/rayburn-cast-iron-ranges

We have a gas Rayburn. It's the love of my life and moved house with me. I had it shipped to France 16 years ago when DD1 was born.

It does our heating but not hot water. We live in a big house with good insulation and never really need to turn the heating part of it on.

It can be used for hot water too but then you'd need the heating part on all the time. (I can't see how it would work otherwise).

Our wood burner is also linked in to the same heating system so we tend to light the fire for extra heating in the evening which then heats any radiators that are on.

Our hot water is a gas boiler because I wanted unlimited hot water. We have 4 teens and we have a bath that's really too big.

We get through 3 x 1300l of gas a year. It's not a cheap option but I adore mine. It's easy to start and stop. Requires no maintenance and should last 30 years minimum.

I had to get an EPC to rent my house out, just after I had had my brand new Stanley (which is very efficient) installed. Even though it was brand new, the EPC man still said it should have been the condensing model. It's the latest fad, so don't worry about it.

If the Rayburn is twin jet and is set up correctly, you should be able to do hw separately from ch; I can on my Stanley, so the heating is off now, and I just use it as the oven and for the hw.

Oh thanks so much everyone. I realise now that even our current home (which I think is always lovely and warm and doesn't cost us crazy amounts) is a D anyway, so I think I overreacted at the E rating!

Some great info here, thanks. In answer to a PP, there were quite a lot of other recommendations, but getting a new boiler seems to be the one that will cause us to apparently just up to a rating of C! The other issue seems to be lack of roof insulation in the garden room (which seems to be a fairly recent extension). So with those two things sorted it looks like it would more than reasonable.

Still not convinced by the aga, but I think the advice on here to live with it for a while and see if it works is a good one. Have decided to definitely put an offer on this house now reassured by all this, so thank you!