[Wistar]

In the early 90s a friend bought a five or six chamber Aga. He had lived in a house in Europe that had had one and he loved it. It cost a fortune to acquire and to install as the house had to be structurally reinforced to accommodate the weight of the oven. I remember that it took at least a couple of days to come up to a stable temperature across the whole oven. Each of the cooking chambers had a different temperature.

I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.

[defrost]

It would have been more ridiculous had his wife left him for one of the burly men fitting the unit in place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_saga

   a subgenre of the family saga genre of literature ... typically interpreted to refer to "a tale of illicit rumpy-pumpy in the countryside" ... it offers a "gingham-checked world" associated with "thatched English villages" and "ladies in floral dresses".

[nojs]

> I remember that it took at least a couple of days to come up to a stable temperature

Funny, the doc says 2-3 hours.

[styren]

That would be with coke, the modern AGAs are electric and definitely took more than a day before they were at temperature

[Wistar]

My friend’s Aga was natural gas. I remember him saying it cost very little to run (early 1990s). I doubt that is still true today.