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Comment by crinkly | Hacker News Reader

Semi-related, but they aren’t the status symbol they used to be. I know a guy who did quite well out of removing Agas for a few years because they are so expensive to run. Apparently up to 20x the cost of more sensible equipment. They were sold for scrap metal value because people weren’t buying them any more. He charged them to remove it and got paid scrap value.

The worst one I heard was someone who paid £10k for their top end Aga, found it was costing £700 a month to run and it was scrap in under a year.

Dead technology.

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They'd be better off installing a small data centre.

But yes - AGAs are ridiculous Veblen goods, literally coal-fired technology repurposed for modern fuels, with modern fuel costs.

They stopped making the always-on models in 2022. The UK has ludicrously high energy prices because of regulatory capture by the fossil fuel lobby. So Agas remain a status symbol for a decreasingly small segment of minor aristocrats who don't care about running costs. But the bulk of the market used to be the aspirational middle classes, and they've mostly moved on.

For smaller cooking jobs an air fryer cooks faster and better, and costs a tiny fraction to buy and run.

> The UK has ludicrously high energy prices because of regulatory capture by the fossil fuel lobby.

I can't really agree with that. It's true the UK's energy (surely "power"?)-mix is depressingly natural-gas heavy, but I don't believe that's not due to regulatory capture: it's because natural-gas plants are what get approval to be built because 15 years ago no-one in the Lib/Tory-pact wanted to sign-off on new nuclear.

*typo, should read "...but I don't believe that's due to regulatory capture".

Unfortunately I'm past the edit time window, bah.

Being less attainable makes it less of a status symbol?

£700pcm to run sounds like something's wrong anyway.

You're right. Wikipedia says 425kWh per week which in the UK would cost 26 pounds for gas. That's the two oven model, maybe he had a bigger unit which let's say used double, which comes to about 200 pounds per month still far away from 70o euros, but also pretty expensive to just run your oven.

Most country houses don’t have gas so use oil or electric ones, mostly oil I think.

The electric ones are just regular ovens in the traditional aesthetic, not on all the time.

They can be solid fuel, possibly oil too, but in recent decades mainly gas - not sure new solid fuel ones are even made, that would just be people who already have them or buying them second hand.

Up until the late 20th century, British homes were very poorly served for heating during their long damp winters. No insulation, no central heating, etc.

Coal was the usual source of energy, and coal fires were usually continually burning, being "banked" at night. In this context, the "always on" AGA was not so unusual.

So the AGA stove served not only as a cooker, but also as a source of heat, similar to masonry heaters. Many were also connected to a hot water tank.

The sales manual above states that the cost of running an AGA stove in 1935 was £4 per year, or £247 (~US$330) per year today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater

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