Comment by DaiPlusPlus
Comment by DaiPlusPlus 13 hours ago
> ...that is always on
with predictable results w.r.t. quality-of-living when your house already has central heating.
Agas used to be a very rural middle-class thing: it was how I imagine most countryside homes' heating and cooking worked, and it scaled from a modestly-sized cosy cottage to being in expansive stately homes. But postwar, and especially since the 1960s, Agas are just a status-symbol appliance to me.
Like, in North America, you know you've made it when you have a Wolf range and a Subzero fridge in your kitchen. In the UK, it's when you've got an Aga.
...probably because the only comfortable way to run the thing is by also having central air-conditioning installed and running full-blast while you use the thing.
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.