pro's & cons of ranges

[charlie-ia]

our house at the moment has two fireplaces, the chimney of one appears to have been lined for a range. we dont have mains gas.

i know various points have been raised in other posts, but could you put together a summary/discussion for me?
ive never had a range, and am worried about it being on all the time (i like it cool), they dont seem very efficient to me, and they take up a lot of room.

if its not on all the time you need a seperate system for hot water,heating and cooking. this all seems a bit pointless, but i havent yet heard anyone regret getting one.
what am i missing?!

at the moment there is an imersion heater and an electric shower. we dont have a cooker or radiators. pondering underfloor heating.

 

[MdB]

Our house originally had a gas back boiler in one fire place for the heating (with a big gas tank in the garden). The hot water was heated from a Rayburn in the kitchen running from oil (with a big tank next to the house which split 12 months after we moved in) and the cooker ran from electric.

We are going to swap to a heat pump for the heating, electric for the hot water plus a cooker with electric oven and a gas hob. Basically we are changing everything.

I believe you can get Rayburns which will do both the hot water and the heating (don't know for sure) but ours only heated the hot water. Unfortunately, even when set to the minimum setting it would still get the water hot enough to boil in the pipes. I guess this was probably down to a poor installation as the water in the tank didn't get this hot. Cooking wise, it was useless as we had it set to the low setting which meant the cooking plates where not hot enough. Its a nice feature in our kitchen but it takes up an awful lot of room and we have decided it has got to go. It did keep our kitchen at a nice temperature though through the winter. The walls though of the kitchen are uninsulated currently. This will change shortly though and I can guess that the heat would be too much once insulated. The oil tank failing really finished it off for us and we haven't bothered to get the tank replaced.

 

[skier-hughes]

I absolutely adore cooking with ours.

It is currently off, due to working in the kitchen, and I miss it.

Ours is underpowered for the heating it is challenged to do, so jkeeps the chill off the house. We have two fires, soon to be more, which keep us toasty.

Ours is oil, it has two burners so in the summer we can turn off the heating.

I wouldn't be without it now.

I make up for it being not so economical by doing other things, like planting trees, burning landfill destined wood, cooking food off the land, which must save much more fuel on food miles than we waste having the rayburn on.

Graham

 

[worms]

Ours is underpowered for the heating it is challenged to do

When installing ours I wondered what needed to be done to upgrade the output if we ever extended the house. The manufacturers say it can't be done but the engineer suggested it was relatively straight forward - change the pump and jet to push more oil through, then more baffles to slow it all down again and extract the heat. Don't know which of the two is correct but I might have my guesses!

 

[skier-hughes]

Our engineer said give me £9k plus fitting for a new model to make it work on your size house. :lol:

 

[Nigel]

Another thing to consider is that, seemingly, many people who have ranges have another "normal" cooker, which they use for most cooking. This begs the question - what does this say about the range as a sole cooker? Certainly before you go down the range route I would suggest you speak to lots of people who have one and ask how it functions, if to be the sole cooker in the house.

Personal choice but we opted out, did the reclaimed radiator thing with a combi boiler and stuck a 4 oven/6 ring electric/gas cooker into the kitchen. When we are having a bunch of friends around the cooker is great and I struggle to see how a range alone could cope.

The combi is great, with never ending hot water.

Time for the range fans to offer the alternative view!

 

[Lime]

You've got to like cooking, cook in a certain way, have most of your time to cook and like a hot kitchen if you use a range.
Personally I don't like the wasted heat in the summer, the inadequate heat output in the winter and all the ritual that seems to go along with owning (or does it own you?) a kitchen range.

They are wonderful to look at and very welcoming on a cold day (in the kitchen) but quick meals are out.

Most people who own them and use them swear by them.

On the otherhand when I've tried to use them I end up swearing at them.
Also, they don't make them like they used to.

 

[Penners]

You've got to like cooking, cook in a certain way, have most of your time to cook and like a hot kitchen if you use a range.
Personally I don't like the wasted heat in the summer, the inadequate heat output in the winter and all the ritual that seems to go along with owning (or does it own you?) a kitchen range.

Our experience is completely different from Lime's.

We have an Esse (oil fired) range that heats the house (15 rads), heats the water and does the cooking. In summer, you can switch off the central heating function, while leaving the hot water and cooking operational. The body of the unit is very well insulated so there's precious little wasted heat, and you don't get a sweltering kitchen in summer.

Mrs P is the main cook in the house, and she reckons that a range does oven cooking much better than anything else. Something to do with the way the oven heats evenly, and is pretty well airtight.

As for "having most of your time to cook", "inadequate heat output in winter" and "ritual", our experience is no, no and no - in that order! It takes a week or two to learn slightly different cooking techniques from gas or electricity, but other than that it's every bit as easy (or difficult - depending on your view of cooking! :wink: )

In our last house, we had a Stanley range, and in that case we did get a hot kitchen in summer. But it was an old model - I think their insulation has improved since.

To my knowledge the following makes of range will do all the functions I've listed above:

Stanley
Esse
Rayburn
Alpha
Aga (if you add on an extra central heating unit - ferociously expensive!)

There may be others.

 

[skier-hughes]

I agree with Penners.

Cold in winter if you don't buy a model big enough to cope with the size of the house.
This will be the same as not buying a big enough boiler to cope with the house size!!

We ahve doors and windows open all summer long, so excess heat isn't a problem for us.

Ours is some 30 or so years old, so not the most efficient in burning or insulation.

Cooking is, as I said amazing. Yes you have to learn to use it. Again ours is old and takes a while to heat up, I wouldn't use it for boiling one egg, but for our evening meal, wow, gorgeous.

We do have a two ring electric hob, for speedy things.

We have no gas.

 

[elm]

I really enjoy cooking on our Rayburn when I have the time to think ahead. It's an elderly oil fired conversion which we tend to run on tickover so that the water doesn't overheat (this is currently its only other task, no radiators of any description here yet .....). It's on all winter, but in the summer we only fire it up when needed, they're really not that difficult to re-light. The Rayburn in our last house was solid fuel, in my opinion preferable to the oil fired version, despite the mess and shovelling ash and remembering to top it up with either logs for cooking or coal to keep the fire in.

For speedier results I swap to the old back kitchen where there is a bottled gas cooker left here by the previous owner - the bottles seem to last for ages, and I do a lot of cooking ....

 

[worms]

I'm definitely not a plan ahead, spend-all-day-cooking type but wouldn't be without the Rayburn. Can't get better fast food than the omelette, mushrooms and bacon that I did directly on the hotplate tonight when I was later home than I had planned! (And don't give me any lectures about cholesterol!)

 

[Penners]

don't give me any lectures about cholesterol

Of course not. Anyway, good cholesterol is good for you. It's only the bad kind that's bad for you (the kind you find in things like omelette, mushrooms and bacon)

 

[Nemesis]

Not a lot of cholesterol in mushrooms...

 

[Penners]

But you can force it in, if you want. I recommend frying in lard.

 

[NT]

A range takes so long to heat up that it needs to be left on all day. So you tend to get even heating, gross waste and summer discomfort.

There are reasons people have moved from victorian ranges to modern cookers. But neither is at all ideal, a combination fan oven & microwave is a lot more versatile, faster and more energy efficient. Most people will need a full size fan oven as well.


NT

 

[Penners]

A range takes so long to heat up that it needs to be left on all day. So you tend to get even heating, gross waste and summer discomfort.

There are reasons people have moved from victorian ranges to modern cookers.

NT, you clearly have no experience of a modern range. From cold to roasting temperature, about 15 mins on ours. Not much different from an electric oven.

 

[Nemesis]

My mother used to make wonderful stuff in our Victorian range!

My electric fan oven isn't brilliant. For a start the temperature isn't easy to control (have to use an oven thermometer and guesswork) and the fan makes it all a bit vicious. Cakes have to be wrapped in layers of brown paper and constantly checked.

The vintage Kenwood Chef now... there's a joy.

 

[Penners]

I would suggest that, if you can bake cakes in your Kenwood Chef, it's probably overheating a bit.

 

[Nemesis]

I've just had another delivered this morning - good ol eBay!

I can bake more cake... in the dratted fan oven (as you well knew wot I was on abhat).

 

[Penners]

A two Kenwood Chef family. Well la-dee-da!