Does anyone have an aga or raeburn?

[Jasper]

Do you recommend it? Did you buy it new? Is it expensive to run?
Thanks

Jasper, kept it on all the time through the winter, as it is very easy to adjust (I had a gas one) turned it up and down when needed. If you want to use it for cooking in the summer it takes upto 45 mins to get to full cooking temp. A friend of mine has one and loves it. I believe you can get it in all fuel types.

BTW gas bill was no different to having a normal gas cooker and central heating on.

I have a gas AGA and wouldn't swap it! We keep it on for all but the hottest (ha ha) months of the year, when we use a small 2-ring induction hob. It makes the kitchen warm and cosy, and a real focus for the house. Everyone congregates there to talk and drink coffee, all the clothes get dried on or near it, you can keep food warm for ages if you need to, the bottom oven is almost like a slow cooker. And its great to be able to arrive home with hungry children, slam in a pizza without having to pre-warm the oven. In case I sound like a born and bred AGA fan, I have to say I had never cooked on one till we moved into our current house and there it was!!

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LOL at the moggy, Robinw. My brother and DW had a Raeburn in their first house. Their cat got up to greet them one evening and left half its ear stuck to the front of the Raeburn!!! And I burnt all the laundry when I left it on the top of the Aga in a holiday cottage once - I guess it hadn't been maintained properly or something.

I'd love to buy an Aga. How much should you expect to pay for one secondhand?

Manky, my current favourite topic!
Check out www.agacentral.com . There are message boards on the community pages section where people advertise their second hand agas. There are also lots of links to other good sites .Currently there are two for sale, a two oven aga for about £3000 and a four oven aga for £4000.
There should be more soon, they recently revamped their message boards so the new messages are taking time to build up slowly.
I have a friend who bought one recently for £500 and it works a treat.
Another was advertised for £500 in the local paper. The sellers got so many replies they put an advert in the following week asking people to stop calling them!
I have been advised to stay away from old ones which have been converted from running on solid fuel to running on modern fuel such as gas or oil.
After much deliberation I have ordered a new one and am very excited about getting it in six weeks' time. At the end of the day I felt it was too risky for me to pay three thousand pounds for something which would have to be transported across the country and installed at at my expense with no guarantee of it working.
Apart from my house and car it is by far the most expensive item I have ever bought. The prices new vary depending on the specifications. A two oven oli fired one which just does the cooking ( ie does not heat the water) is about £5100, (inc. vat) plus the cost of setting up the kitchen with a chimney, oil line, plinth for it to sit on.
You may wish to consider a Rayburn or an Esse, both of which are considerably cheaper and you could buy a brand new one for the price of a second hand aga. They are slightly smaller so work well in most modern / average sized kitchens. They are also more readily controllable.
I have taken about three years to make my mind up and at the end of the day thought nothing but an aga would do and even decided to go for the four oven model! The new kitchen will have to wait and there will be no holidays for a while, but I can't remember the last time I was so excited about anything. I am currently about six months pregnant and wonder of this is an extreme and expensive example of nest building!
Let me know what you decide.
Yours, obsessed....

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IT'S HERE! The aga arrived four days ago after a fraught time when it looke like the plumbers would not get the chimney ready on time ( and AGA would have charged us £250 to reschedule the installation!)
It is wonderful. I am completely thrilled about it and have to stop myself from being an aga bore. The meals I have made so far have been lovely.
Thanks to all of you for your advice which helped me take the plunge.

Jasper Congratulations on the birth of your new aga!
I have been reading this thread with interest and I have tempted to take the plunge and get one myself.
They sound lovely. Just the thing for these long winter days!
Please tell us more about your new addition Jasper.Don't worry about being a aga bore I for one would love too hear more.

Well done Jasper... I envy you !!!! What colour did you go for ? Have a 2 or 4 oven one ? Did you get the cookbooks ?

Right ladies, you asked for it....
Pupuce, I chose a black one, and we decided to go the extra mile and get a four oven one. This was dhs idea actually, he reckoned you would never regret buying one that was a bit big but might regret getting one that was too small. Frankly I think it was just that men and big things phenomenon but did not argue.
What kind does your mil have Pupuce?
We took down the wall between kitchen and dining room to make one big room.
I got the basic Mary Berry cookbook, in fact it comes with the aga, along with some accessories like roasting tins, a toaster accessory ( looks like a big wire tennis bat)and oven shelves.

Callie I would say go for it. I have swithered about buying one for eight years. What finally prompted me, indirectly, was September 11th. Please don't think I am trivialising those terrible events, but the aga decision was prompted by a kind of you don't know what's around the corner feeling which I think we all felt after that dark day.
Also, I took out an ISA account three years ago and got the statement in around October, and like everyone elses it had lost a lot of money so I decided it was time to spend some savings I had and enjoy something nice. An Aga was an extravagent choice but there was nothing else I wanted! I have a bit of a problem about spending money on myself at the best of times,and although this was my idea it will be enjoyed by the rest of my family too. Dh loves it and has bought the ingredients to bake bread!
I know this sounds corny, but already it has become "the heart of the home", a phrase I kept hearing whenever aga owners got onto their favourite topic.
It's too early to tell about the fuel consumption and the difference it will make to our bills but if the published figures on fuel consumption are correct it will cost about £9 a week in oil, and if you have mains gas, less I think. We have turned off the radiators in half the house so there will be a corresponding reduction in oil in that respect.
The food I have cooked so far ( Roast chicken, roast beef, potatoes, roast vegetables, meringues) has been spectacular.The idea it is always on and ready to cook is so appealing. Even ironing is fun, as I iron clothes slightly damp and air them on the aga. This gives me a warm domestic glow..( I have gone into pregnancy hormone induced aga overdrive now......)
The other thing I love about it is the idea it will last for a very long time, and possibly outlive me.
As an unexpected bonus, the Aga shop offered £250 in vouchers if we paid in full two weeks before delivery, and with my vouchers I bought a kitchenaid food mixer ( big heavy thing like the one Nigella uses) which I would never have bought in a million years with "real" money!
The aga cookware is very expensive but so far I have had no problems with my average heavyish pans.
If you have the space and the money ( and you don't need much space for a two oven one) go for it Callie!

Jasper - MIL has a cream 4-oven one (electrical). She is in love with it and talks about it like if it were her baby!!!
The big oven mits are a must (I think).
I have made a chocolate cake from the Good Houskeeping - winter cookbook for AGA whcih was excellent and so easy to make and I made the apple tart Canterbury style (or what ever it is called) from p 164 from the New Marry Berry cookbook.
With your new oven and Kitchenaid you sound so posh... do you drive a landrover (just kidding).
What about the new kitchen, have you decided ???

Jasper, You've just about convinced me!
We have just bought a large house that is old and v run down. We are going to be living in our present house in the mean time as our new house is going to take at least 6mths work. It needs totally renovating and then we will rent out our present house and move in!
One of the parts Iam most looking forward too is the kitchen planning.
I had thought about totally modern streamlined with a stainless steel oven but have gone off the idea and am thinking more of a classic look with an aga as a centerpeice.
I think I too would get a brand new one as I would be worried about spending so much on second hand.

Hahaha, I have never in my life been described as posh! Not by anyone who has seen me!
No, I don't have a landrover, but I did have an old one a few years ago, I think it was called a defender, looked a bit like something the army would use, and had no seats in the back ( pre kids) It broke down all the time, and finally went on fire in my friend's driveway! Now she IS posh, and lives in a very smart part of town so it was quite a spectacle to see a car go up in flames in her driveway.
The police questioned me just to check I wasn't an arsonist, but I suppose if you are going to torch your car for the insurance money you would not choose to do it where you risked burning down your friend's house!
We are not going to get a new kitchen after all. The aga took all our budget, because of the decision to get a 4 oven one which was new.Also the cost of getting the chimney etc. installed was pretty steep. So my dh and his very handy father reshuffled all the old units around the walls of the kitchen . They are probably 20 years old and have seen better days but after a coat of paint will do just fine.
Callie at the risk of sounding like a stuck record, you won't regret getting an aga, and in an old house you can convince yourself you are doing it to keep the chill off the old timbers!Have you checked out any of the aga websites?

Pupuce, are you a bit of an insomniac too?

Callie - Don't go down the stainless steel route! The cookers look gorgeous for the first week or two, and in the showrooms, but they are a nightmare to keep clean and shiny.

We went down the stainless steel double oven with Calor Gas fuel - no natural gas in rural Wiltshire and regret it bitterly. For some reason I used to have much more time to be anal and endlessley polish the oven with stainless steel back board - pre baby of course and now .. well. The major safety drawback is they do get very hot especially when the shove it in a pot for supper has been on low heat since lunch time nap, and so I have to put 3 chairs around the oven if I cannot be bothered to get the fireguard out!. So I am forever saying - No hot hot! No stress in my life then.

Help! I love my aga; i also have a nearly crawling baby. Before one meets the other, is there anyone out there who knows where i can get a guard to protect the baby from the AGA? I can't belive I'm the first person to want this, but AGA don't seem able to help... does anyone have any ideas...
a quick response would be appreciated as she'll be on the move before very long... thanks!!

Ah, bigims, a subject close to my heart.
Thanks to the advice I got here I bought a wonderful black 4 oven Aga in January and like you I absolutely love it.
My daughter had just turned one when I got it and like you I was a bit concerned about her but I have to reassure you it really is not a problem.
This maybe sounds cruel but the heat from the door of the roasting oven is not hot enough to cause a burn - hot enough so that if you pressed your hand against it you would withdraw it pretty quickly but it is not hot enought to burn you.
My dd is extremely inquisitive but there has never been any sort of problem at all. She worked out immediately that it is hot and has never been in any danger.
I really think it is completely unnecessary to try to rig up some kind of a guard around it.
My advice is to stop worrying and keep cooking

a babydan playpen may do the job. it is available from argos and tesco (I think) and is made up of six sturdy panels which can be adjusted to get around "difficult" shapes. We use ours to protect the christmas tree lights from ds's inquisitive fingers.

I might be wrong but I think I may have seen ads for a babyquard type thing in the back of the Aga mag. I would endorse Jasper's comment though - they learn very very quickly and in any case it isn't hot enough to burn. Ours is off at the moment and using our second cooker is much of a problem with our 3 year old around. Every time I leave the kitchen when I am cooking he sneaks over and adjusts the temperature - Grrrr!.

Oh and Jasper, thanks for the tip re the strong white flour for bread. I have used plain a few times now and also can't tell any difference.

I've got an AGA and two children - like the others posting here, its also not caused any problems. I would say the only tricky time is for about a week when the children are able to stand for a second or two, then they lean on something and can't move away from it in case they fall over. (does that make sense?) So we watched them closely for those few days and then its been fine. They know its hot and stay away. If they do touch the sides it's not going to give them a burn like a fire would.

I agree with everyone who says no need to get a guard - I have had an aga since before dd was born, she is now 5 and has never been burned. I also warned "hot" when she was tiny and she learned without incident.

Agree with what has been said - MIL has a four oven and my 2 1/2 and my 1 yo had no problem with it... actually my 1yo put her hand on the roasting oven and noticed it was hot but clearly wasn't burnt and she didn't cry... had a surprised look on her face though !