£70 to run an oven for a week?! How the fuel crisis has Aga owners ripping out their stoves
Name: Aga.
Age: 100.
Appearance: repurposed locomotive engine, usually in cream or duck egg blue.
But it’s an oven, right? An Aga is so much more than an oven: you can dry clothes above it, and boil water on top of it, and dogs like to lie in front of them.
So it’s an oven that leaks heat. It gives off a lovely radiant warmth, 24 hours a day.
What do you do in summer? Many owners turn them off, otherwise the kitchen becomes unbearable.
Then how do they cook? They usually have a separate electric oven and hob for that.
An oven that requires a backup oven? Whose stupid idea was this? Nobel prize-winning Swedish physicist Gustaf Dalén invented the cast-iron Aga cooker in 1922, when he was stuck at home after being blinded in an industrial accident.
Why would someone want something so patently obsolete? Are they cheap? Heavens, no. They are insanely expensive.
Would it be fair to say it’s more of a lifestyle choice than an appliance? Yes, although it’s a lifestyle owners are increasingly giving up on – they’re having their Agas ripped out.
Why? High energy prices make them too expensive to use.
Really? It sounds as if you have to be quite rich to own one in the first place. You have to be quite rich to get rid of one. Just removing an Aga can cost £500.
And it’s still worth doing? Evidently: a gas-fired Aga uses as much as 30 or 40 times the energy of an ordinary gas cooker. Even newer, more efficient electric models can cost £70 a week to run. One Blackpool-based uninstaller has already taken out 35 Agas this year.
What does Aga have to say about this? It says that Agas are made from recycled iron and that they last much longer than conventional ovens.
Yeah, but still. It also suggests owners upgrade to one of its new programmable,
Read more on theguardian.com
