cooking ranges.

[skier-hughes]

The flaw for us is we don't have any means of turning the rayburn on or off, it's an old one running on wicks, so it uses oil continually. We could spend £1800 on convcerting it to a pressurised jet system, which would great, but at 30+ years old is it worth it...... I think maybe, we'll see after Friday's visits.

 

[MdB]

We switched our Rayburn (oil fired with a wick) on and off daily as otherwise it boiled our hot water and over heated the kitchen. Wasn't a problem.

 

[skier-hughes]

Ours takes best part of a day to heat up, and if we have it on number 1 will keep the kettle hot.
Graham

 

[Cloudscape]

We use a 1978 solid-fuel Rayburn. It's only gone out twice since Feb '08 - once because we forgot to put any fuel in :roll: and the second time because we went away for a few days. We riddle it and fill it up last thing at night, then it idles until about 4.30 or 5.00 pm, when I riddle it again, top it up with fuel and open it up the vents to get it hotter for cooking. It provides constant hot water for washing, washing up and washing clothes. We supplement it occasionally with an oil boiler to get a bath if the water's not already hot enough. The radiators are also heated by the oil boiler. We don't have an immersion heater (it's kaput). We make tea/coffee with an electric kettle.

Cooking's fine. I didn't think I'd manage, but I do. The hob is easy to bring up to heat. The oven takes a little longer, depending on how hot you want it. All day long, the oven is at, say, 'low setting'. I can bung croissants or teacakes in it and they're warmed up pretty quickly.

I have heard of back boilers rusting through (as mentioned above), but I believe you get a choice of cast iron or copper. Ours is cast iron and seems to be doing OK.

On the other side of the fireplace is the old range (1860s). That also has a back boiler (iron, I believe), and that tops the hot water up faster than the oil boiler does.

People who had oil or gas Rayburns that do everything tell me that each function has to rob the others. If you want to cook, the central heating is robbed temporarily. With the Rayburn I have now, when I cook, I also get hotter water.

I'd be sad to get rid of the Rayburn, even though it's a bit tatty, I'm fond of it. But I'm going to have to come up with some ideas in the next couple of years. The oil boiler is ancient and inefficient. I got my eye taken by those 'super-efficient' wood gasification boilers that use a small fan to cause hotter combustion, and then burn most of the smoke as well. I was just a little disappointed that they need electricity and it would probably be overkill having the Rayburn as well.