Jane writes
"All over the country people are facing up to the hideous cost of running their Agas. "We should really get rid of ours," my friend Mark said the other day, "but how will we be middle class then?" The Times 12 April 2008
I have just been out to our oil tank to work out how much oil we've used since our last delivery on 11th February. The Aga has used 376 litres in 8 weeks so that is an average of 47 litres a week. My last oil delivery was 40p per litre so its costing me £18.80 a week to run the Aga. Thats all our cooking, hot water and, of course, drying the washing. Is this reasonable?
I can't bring myself to work out if I'd save anything by having an electric cooker, tumbler dryer and used the immersion heater for water because I wouldn't want to give up my Aga. I'm sure that the cost of replacing the Aga with a cooker, clothes dryer and water heater would negate any saving in running costs. Of course if we ever get around to installing a wind turbine to generate electricity it may be worth making the swop.Incidentally, we have used 867 litres of oil since 11th February for the central heating! That is costing us an average of £43.35 a week. Roll on the summer........although the Aga uses oil all year round we can usually manage without the central heating for 4-5 months.
2 comments:
hi I was interested in your cost comments, do you turn your aga off in summer? We have a gas fired aga, but are thinking of moving further into the country where oil fired seems the only option other than to get an Esse range which are wood fired. The rising cost of all fuels has made me look again at the aga...however I need to ponder your point in terms of heating drying and cooking.
Wish some more people would come up with costs
Hi Helen, a Wiltshire mum and teacher here! Read your 2008blog about your Aga running costs with great interest as we have just decided to wave our beautiful old duck egg green Aga goodbye and buy ourselves an Everhot....great mixed feelings in our kitchen about this,but we think we are going save ourselves so much money by doing this, particularly as we have solar panels in the roof which will help with summer electricity expenses. With luck, the Everhot will do everything the Aga did in terms of comfort, apart from drying the clothes overnight,so am building a big drying cupboard with a tiny heater on a timer in it. The Everhot 100plus looks comfortingly like an Aga, has three ovens and everyone I have spoken to who owns one raves about it-and these are previous Aga owners! Hope this might be helpful to anyone wondering if they can keep the comfort but ditch some of the crippling expense.
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