We are hoping to move house and have found one that we are planning to offer on but it has an almost new Rayburn Heatranger oven which also supplies heat to radiators plus hot water. There is no other source of heating/hot water as a back up although there is another cooker.

I am a bit worried about how much it will cost to run as the Rayburn website suggests around 30kg of coal a day which at around £300 a tonne delivered for suitable smokeless fuel is err £300 month! The current owner is a builder so gets all his wood for free so couldn't advise.

More likely we would use wood due to sustainability but then I guess you have to top it up more and you don't get the same heat output.

Anyone any experience of these Rayburns and how much they cost to run? I guess we could go foraging for wood but realistically won't have the time to find enough to meet all our fuel requirements. Any help would be much appreciated.

You could probably get a proper boiler installed for not a huge sum of money. It would be more efficient and would not puke heat/energy out all day long.

My grandparents had a solid fuel range for heat/water in their tied house. When they got it converted to oil the quality of their lives increased by several hundred percent. I'd see whether a conversion was possible and cost that in rather than perpetuate solid fuel and the burden that brings.

If you like steam trains (especially the stoking bit) I guess a solid fuel range might be nice.

I ran one in Orkney on Peat. A week of evenings cutting, maybe a couple of evenings spreading and raising , and a few trips to the hill to bring them home. Job done.

Where I am now, we have a solid fuel AGA from the 50s, works out about £25-30 a week.

30kgs! Jesus.

I think our stove with back boiler that does our CH and HW gets through about 6kg of coal or / and wood a day at the moment, sometimes 1/2 that, sometimes a little more depending on how cold the day is. And it's burning or banked up 24 hours a day but 'active' from at least 4:30am until about 7pm…

We use a mix of wood (cheap and local) and furnicite.

woffle

that is reassuring, I was surprised that it would get through 30kg of coal! Unless you liked your house to be a tropical temperatures

mcmoonter – does your aga supply heat and hot water as well or is it just an oven?

Is it possible for you have an immersion heater in the water tank that the rayburn heats up?
That's the set up I've got. That way you don't have to light a fire in the middle of summer just because you want a shower.

The Aga really only heats the domestic hot water, The Rayburn did CH and DHW.

I've got a pal who has just installed a huge woodburning CH system. It takes huge chunks of trees and possibly round bales. I think i has a 5000 litre tank of hot water. Nae shortage of bath water there.

The owner of the saw mill I get my wood from has a woodfired boiler that they use to heat an outdoor pool!

There is an immersion heater in the water tank so we woudl have hot water in summer – also considering solar thermal hot water. But I am still astounded at the fuel requirement!

I use the immersion heater most of the time apart from the depths of winter to be honest. The fire's great, but i'm naturally lazy, and having to constantly remove the thin film of soot and ash off stuff in the kitchen when it's in use, isn't high on my todo list 😉