[Stoves] News: Pico-hydro for electric cooking (Financial Times)

[neiltm at uwclub.net]

On 18 Apr 2017 at 13:38, Nikhil Desai wrote:

> People of a certain age, or from Britain, may remember the Aga.  The
> name is an abbreviation of the company name, Aktiebolaget Gas
> Accumulator. 

My childhood home was heated from 1957 to some time in the 80s by a 
number 3 gas coke AGA boiler (not range cooker), fuelled twice a day, 
heating water and radiators via thermosyphon through something like 2 
inch diameter pipes.  The water jacket cylindrically surrounded the coke 
much like a large kelly kettle.  It was so well insulated that my father 
found it didn't heat the small room it was located in sufficiently well, 
so he bolted a copper sheet as a radiator onto the outlet pipe.  When 
North sea gas replaced coal gas, the coke ceased to be available and 
various smokeless fuels were tried, none with the success of what it was 
designed for, and on one occasion gas igniting at the top as my father 
was refuelling it took his eyelashes and eyebrows off!  They replaced it 
with a conventional mains natural gas boiler.

Neil Taylor (of a certain age and from England)