What would I do with an Aga?

The other irony is that this year we have used very little fuel as it has been so mild. Last year was really cold so we used more fuel and that was used for the calculation.
I don't know if you have ever demolished one of the double stone walls, but when we did we found that the infill was full of skeletons of small animals, acorns, hazelnuts etc. We also found a pair of ancient shoes, which used to be put in for good luck. We photographed them and then sealed them up again as they started to fall apart in the air.
That part of the house was occupied by refugees from the north after the invasion in 1940 so I hope they got some of the good luck.

Mamie Our Normandy house is also very old, possibly 1600 and, like yours it has stone walls with an earth infill, which should have a reasonable U value. We too are very glad that, unlike our British home, it is not listed. We have replaced all the external windows and doors with plastic double glazing, that looks no different to the wooden windows they replace. For the last few years we have been turning most of the space on the first floor back into habitable accommodation and that is very well insulated, both walls and ceilings. the house is now much warmer.

The irony is, as you point out, that although we have diligently done all this, it seems all they will look at fuel consumption, and that is very low.

450 euros for 2 EPCs !!! Way cheaper than that in the UK.

I would have to redesign my kitchen and get rid of some cupboards to fit one in.

A friend bought an Aga last year(?) and got a full day's cookery demonstration including eating the results. Maybe you would be able to pay for this if you explain the situation -) if they do it anywhere close enough. Friend did have to go to Glasgow.

Thanks Flickety, that is helpful. We had done all of the things on your list and had even changed the last three lightbulbs, which he didn't look at. Very frustrating.
Therefore, if you ever sell your Normandy house, beware of the fuel bills. I guess a holiday home might score quite well on that basis though as it wouldn't normally have as much fuel consumption. Bonkers!
The stone walls are all double skinned with earth between the two sets of stone so I am not sure why that scores so badly.
The house dates from some time before 1730 so I guess it would be listed in the UK. Mind you if they did listing here then we couldn't have put in double-glazing, plasterboard over wall insulation etc. My Conservation Officer cousins do a lot of wandering around with a sharp intake of breath here.

Mamie in the UK as far as I know, fuel bills are not used to assess energy efficiency as peoples heating patterns are so varied. If you took a pair of semis with exactly the same level of insulation and two households of identical age and size, one neighbour could have fuel bills twice the size of the other because they have the heating on longer, on a higher setting and keep a lot of windows open. Here, the energy assessors use a basic energy efficiency calculator developed by the Building Research Establishment that calculates how energy efficient a house is based on how well insulated walls, roof, windows and floors are and assessing the efficiency of the CH boiler, whether there are any open chimneys and whether the lights all have low energy bulbs. However the software is based on the assumption that everyone lives in an absolutely standard modern built house with cavity brick walls, tiled roofs and double glazed windows.

This caused endless problems for those of us living in houses which do not conform to the software norm. particularly where the materials used in the construction were not known or were mixed. So many problems that since the beginning of this year all Listed Buildings have been exempted from the regulations and no longer need to get an energy efficiency rating.

This is quite a relief, not that we are thinking of moving, but we were curious how the assessor was going to assess our house where the ground floor at the back is double brick with a narrow cavity (1960's), an end wall and a quarter of the front is single brick (late 19th century) but half of which has been insulated inside (21st century). the rest is wattle and daub (15th century), but again about a third of the walls have internal insulation(21st century), Oh, the roof (15th century) is standard clay tiled(19th century(?)) and has the recommended 300mms of roof insulation.

When I married in 1958, i had little experience of cooking. Armed with a 1987 Good Housekeeping cookbook and thinking that If I could read, I could cook I was fairly confident I would cope. BUT - it didn't tell me how to light the fire, clean the flues, control the vents according to which way the wind was blowing, or how to know how hot the oven was in the rayburn, which was my only oven. A frantic letter to my mother came back with the advice to put a piece of greaseproof paper in the oven - if it turned brown - cook pastry, but if it stayed the same it should be baked potatoes and rice pudding, and get it in QUICK! Before long I had tamed the beast and ended up even cooking all the bread, buns, pastries etc for my growing brood.

An Aga is a larger equivalent and to have a gas controlled one is my idea of heaven. In most cases they provide, cooking, hot water and heating and are economical to run. don't be afraid of it, you will love it.

We commissioned it ourselves (trying to avoid 8% that estate agents charge on sales here). It was about 450€ and took quite a while because he did the two houses separately and we did think he seemed a bit overwhelmed by the size of the task. We were able to prove that we had the insulation though, because we had photos of it going in. Wood-burners plus oil is pretty standard here; gas is only available in cylinders and costs more than oil anyway. I have also heard that stone houses get marked down, even with the thick insulation behind plasterboard that we have.

Grannyknot I will recount the story of the house with the Aga and the Aircon to my energy efficiency mates, next time I want to wind them up.
mamie EPCs are scientific but there are limitations in what they are allowed to take into account. e.g. a really detailed calculation would include things like what part of the country you were in and whether your house was on a mountain top or in a sheltered spot. Also they are not allowed, if I remember correctly, to drill a small hole the walls to check the presence of cavity wall insulation. This is because it is an indicator and not a full, gold plated energy survey.
If you have the loft and the cavities insulated, I suspect it might be the wood burners and the oil that are bumping it up. However there is scope for human error and your house is not a standard form of heating.
It is possible though that he has made a mistake. He might never have done a house with wood burners + oil before or he could have entered the data wrongly into the software. Did you commission it yourself or was it done through an estate agent?

Bit off topic, but I am struggling with the energy performance certificate stuff here. We have double glazing and good quality insulation everywhere in this house. We heat with wood-burners and back-up oil. The young man who came to do the survey wanted all the fuel bills, which we gave him. He first gave the house a G which was a bit of a shock. We worked out that he had used two years of fuel bills to calculate annual costs so he redid it and made it an E. Is that it? Just how much you spend on fuel? If we froze all winter would that make the house more energy efficient? The guest cottage, which is not as well insulated, but has a pellet stove and is hardly used in the winter got a C.
All seems very unscientific to me, though I am prepared to believe that the French system is just bizarre!
Back on topic, I wouldn't bother with an Aga, we have a Lacanche range which is fabulous.

Jess and everyone else, thanks a ton for info, we were not handed a printed flyer when we viewed this cottage, and have now checked details online and the energy efficiency indicators are all the red i.e. not good at all. So that, and the tell-tale aircon units in the house, have made us decide against it.

Phew, I'm actually relieved.

re expensive mollie my friends that work in the energy efficiency industry tend too go all red mist at the word Aga. I would urge, when viewing houses, to ask the agent for the EPC (energy performance certificate) which will give an indication of how much you are going to spend to heat the house. They do not of course include appliances but I can find out if they include Agas as they are a really a cooker/heater because they are on all the time. If there was one installed in our energy efficient rental flat we would have to have all the windows open all winter long.

Many Aga owners have a conventional cooker as well. I believe that Aga even sell a model which includes a conventional cooker.

Personally when we redid our kitchen 15 years ago I decided to dispense with the cost of the Aga and have a conventional range cooker, so much cheaper!

You DID say that you can cook with them?

Deeda I do have a nice cat recipe if you would like it?

had an oil-fired aga two houses ago
pros -
good for toast, keeping kitchen warm, drying clothes

cons -
d--n expensive, had to turn off in the summer as too hot and then faff around relighting
not controllable (at least the old model I had wasn't)
still needed a boiler for hot water
needed the gentle ministrations of the 'aga man' each year - was about £35 twelve years ago

but I am sure they have come a long way since then

Thank you, thank you everyone. We wondered when we saw the air-conditioning units in the adjacent lounge! Will do some of my own research too.

Firstly, how big is the kitchen and how cold is it? I was brought up with a solid fuel Aga and moved to houses that had oil-fired Agas and you really don't want them going at the height of the summer unless you have a cool kitchen, so everywhere I have been has had an electric cooker for summer use. As our summers can be pretty short that is fine as long as you have the room for an additional cooker. However, there is nothing nicer on a cold winter's day than an Aga or Rayburn, to put the clothes airer in front of, have constant heat and not worry about slow casseroles using electricity and yes, bum warming. Is it mains gas or propane? Because if it is propane, that could be very expensive. I use it for my cooking, but would never use it for heating, even oil is cheaper than propane when it comes to heating a house. If you make bread, there is nothing like it for making wonderful bread. The last house we lived in was a Mill house, horribly damp, I wouldn't have coped without that Aga. Frogs hopping across the floor early in the morning is not my idea of fun, with bare feet.

John Lewis has some really nice cooking ranges, I would go and have a look at them. It may be that you just need what has been mentioned above, a gas hob for summer use inserted into the worktops.

We had a Swedish item that was similar - but solid fuel. It was heavily dependent on the wind direction and I had to coax and cajole it into cooperating. But I did take some delight in putting disposable nappies in there and cooking dinner with them! Heaven knows what that was doing to the environment, but we were in a state of blissful ignorance on that subject then.

It was also very useful for drying washing over - I had one of those wooden daisy racks that you hauled up on a rope. Not only did the frying pan have nappies for fuel, but also wet socks dripping down and adding flavour!

The gas ones are more efficient. Maybe stick with it for a while and see if you become converted. You can always change to something more familiar to you at a later date.

I've always believed that the main purpose for a AGA was for cats to sit on it, but I believe you can cook with them as well
My friend bought a house with one years ago and went on an AGA cooking course which she found very useful.

Phoenix thank you, and it just goes to show that entire threads can pass a person by! I never saw this one at all, or, my memory is worse than I imagine

Will read it now.

There! I knew I hadn't gone mad!

www.gransnet.com/forums/house_and_home/a1204371-Aga-anyone

Am I having deja vu? I thought there was a thread with almost the same question recently? I'm pretty sure I posted on it about hypothermic lambs

sunseeker - out of curiosity, would you go back to gas/electric central heating and hot water now?