How best to use an Electrikit converted Aga range cooker day to day to save money, a few tips and best practices.
Timers - A timer may not be the right solution for all. Sometimes it complicates things! But as a general rule, if you have a decent gap of time between your points of use of the Aga, you will likely benefit from a timer or simply turning your Aga on and off. A decent gap of time would be - turn off at dinner, not back on until lunch the next day.
It makes no sense to turn the ovens off if you have a cooked breakfast, then bake, then lunch, then preserve making the dinner. Leave on all day, turn off at night. Timers can be simple digital timers, great if you have a fixed routine! Or wifi timers, but we only recommend these if your wifi is reliable.
Hotplates -Only use them as you need them, and reduce your use down to one. If the ovens are on, use the right one as this ‘piggy backs’ off the heat stored in the roasting oven. For an almost ready plate leave one on at the simmering temperature and then turn up to full as and when you need to. The plates cannot be left on at high temperatures for long periods of time.
Or do not use the hotplates at all! You can use the bottom of the roasting oven like a hotplate. 300g of pasta cooks to a perfect al dente in 11 mins! Meals like a ‘full English’ need not use the hobs at all!
Only use the ovens that you need {3 or 4 oven} scale down to 2 ovens most of the time, relaxing when you need all the ovens knowing that you have saved money in the interim!
Make sure that your lids and doors are well insulated and sealed! {Blake & Bull offer this with every installation}
Switch to an electric kettle for busy days, relax into brunch days and hotplate kettle as a treat! With one KWH of electricity you can boil around 6 kettles, that is around 24 cups of tea. Moving from 13 amp to Electrikit you could boil 162 kettles {with the KWH saving you make}, that's 1296 cups of tea a week with an electric kettle.
Turn the ovens off a little before you have stopped cooking. The ovens hold heat, if your dish is near ready, or the type of dish that can happily sit for a while {like a big Chilli Con Carne} turn the ovens off {for the night}.
Room Vent. This topic divides folk. {further information} Flues have the potential to suck heat from ovens, this makes the element work harder to retain heat, and you may end up paying to heat and oven that would otherwise by itself retain that heat. This is not the case with all flues, but if you think that your flue has wind ingress - it is worth swapping to a room vent.
You can still dry laundry above {safely on racks} on a converted Aga range cooker, but you may want to leave the hotplates on a resting setting overnight. Get into a routine, and have a laundry day/night. As opposed to leaving them all the time in ‘ready’ mode.
One of our users{see here for her brilliant bakes!} batch cooks all her savoury food one day,and cakes and goodies the next, then turns her Blake & Bull fully restored aga range cooker off, occasionally using the hotplates for warming up her meals. In this scenario another oven is needed for warming through food.
Chat to Alex or Emma about conversion and the reality of thereof! < Click
