Range Cooker - decent quality?

[Tim O]

Decided to take out our oil powered Aga and fit a range cooker in its place. No gas supply here so would be all electric, and induction hob seems to be favourite. Could be 90 or 100cm wide but 90 helps a bit with location of one kitchen cabinet.

So, what brands should we looking at? Had a Smeg in a previous house, it was okay, nothing to shout about, but would consider another. Rangemaster, Falcon, Lacanche, etc? Other cheaper brands - Bell8ng, Stoves, Biko?

Would be keen on a refurb or second hand to save a bit. (Prob won’t be in this house long)

Any experiences? Suggestions please.

Edited by Tim O on Wednesday 26th April 22:50

[Regbuser]

AFAIK, rangemaster, falcon, belling, and stoves, are all brands under AGA Rangemaster - and all shoddily made.

[Jockinthebox]

100% not lacanche


For the last 2 years I’ve possibly cooked on over 200 different stoves/ranges/ovens/AGAs

Lacanche and Smeg are by far the most unreliable.

Wolfe are by far the best, but possibly too big for your space.

[bennno]

Tim O said:

Decided to take out our oil powered Aga and fit a range cooker in its place. No gas supply here so would be all electric, and induction hob seems to be favourite. Could be 90 or 100cm wide but 90 helps a bit with location of one kitchen cabinet.

So, what brands should we looking at? Had a Smeg in a previous house, it was okay, nothing to shout about, but would consider another. Rangemaster, Falcon, Lacanche, etc? Other cheaper brands - Bell8ng, Stoves, Biko?

Would be keen on a refurb or second hand to save a bit. (Prob won’t be in this house long)

Any experiences? Suggestions please.

Edited by Tim O on Wednesday 26th April 22:50

Not smeg, noisy fan runs on for ages afterwards

[renmure]

Have to say that we were very happy with our electric induction Rangemaster after replacing an oil fired Rayburn. It was the larger model and was faultless for the 10 years or so we had it before we moved last year.

[PhilboSE]

Had a good experience with Britannia range cooker in the past.

Jockinthebox said:

Wolfe are by far the best, but possibly too big for your space.

Interested to hear why you think Wolf are so good. I’ve got one (came with the house), it’s fine but nothing special in my opinion that sets it apart from the others. Mines failed in two separate ways since I’ve owned it, though to be fair the previous owner wasn’t exactly great at maintenance.

Three reasons IMHO I wouldn’t buy a Wolf:
1. They’re stupid expensive to buy (£10,000; really?)
2. They’re stupid expensive to repair (£200 per 30mins on call-out)
3. They’re a unique width so nothing can ever directly replace them.

[don'tbesilly]

We’ve just replaced our 18 yr old Britannia cooker with a 100cm Bertazzoni (Pro10512EXT) after looking at quite a few other options including Rangemaster & Smeg.

We were surprised at the negative comments received in regards to Smeg cookers whilst deciding which way to go as it was originally our favoured choice, but after looking at a number of manufacturers offerings the Bertazzoni came tops.

It’s all electric with an induction hob ( very few, if any manufacturers offer ceramic hobs any more) and we are very pleased with how it’s worked out so far.

https://uk.bertazzoni.com/products/professional-se...

[NorthDave]

Jockinthebox said:

100% not lacanche


For the last 2 years I’ve possibly cooked on over 200 different stoves/ranges/ovens/AGAs

Lacanche and Smeg are by far the most unreliable.

Wolfe are by far the best, but possibly too big for your space.

I'm surprised to hear that. Mine is 15 or 20 years old and built like a tank. Its never needed anything and just works.

[jmn]

We've had a Rangemaster for the last 20 years.

Gas hob, electric oven.

100% reliable and works well.

[Teddy Lop]

Lacanche is great if you're someone who sets fire to money and watches it burn for fun. Replaced a couple of parts for someone the other year, the fan was a ebm parts bin item as found on a wide range of appliances with a bit of metal bracket bolted on and a X10 price tag.

Smeg is marketing, people think it's a brand but it really isn't anything better than budget.

[Baldchap]

We had a Rangemaster in our old house. It's was a decent piece of kit IMO.

We now have three normal size ovens in a row. The Rangemaster looked a lot prettier, even if we have more options when cooking these days!

[Grumps.]

We had a Mercury in a previous house and we were there for over 10 years and never had one issue with it.

Not sure now though as we sold the house with it.

[Harpoon]

We've got a Rangemaster dual fuel in our kitchen. I think we've got the receipt from the previous owner of our house who purchased it but it's circa 15 years old I think. I've replaced a couple of the oven elements, though I did that in the oven at our previous house so to me they are long-term consumables.

We have a new kitchen planned for autumn this year, so we have been looking at new Rangemaster options. Smeg looked too fussy for us. As we are on bottled LPG for the hob, we are debating going to an all electric model to do away with the gas bottles.

I just looked up Wolf, then noticed the odd widths (noted by another poster above) - why?

[Dicky Knee]

Harpoon said:

We've got a Rangemaster dual fuel in our kitchen. I think we've got the receipt from the previous owner of our house who purchased it but it's circa 15 years old I think. I've replaced a couple of the oven elements, though I did that in the oven at our previous house so to me they are long-term consumables.

We have a new kitchen planned for autumn this year, so we have been looking at new Rangemaster options. Smeg looked too fussy for us. As we are on bottled LPG for the hob, we are debating going to an all electric model to do away with the gas bottles.

I just looked up Wolf, then noticed the odd widths (noted by another poster above) - why?

I just looked up Wolf and noticed the prices.

[PhilboSE]

Harpoon said:

I just looked up Wolf, then noticed the odd widths (noted by another poster above) - why?

They’re usually specified by kitchen designers for high end kitchens where the final cost might be into 6 figures. The customer doesn’t really think about it but is sold on the kitchen concept. The designers love them because their margin on £25,000 worth of Wolf+SubZero is a lot more than what they’d get on £5000 worth of [insert any other brands here].

The unusual sizes I think are deliberate so that you can only ever replace a Wolf oven with another Wolf oven without getting whole new kitchen units made or ugly fillets installed. They’re American companies but their sizes aren’t standard over there either.

[heisthegaffer]

Do we think that people have these appliances for 10nplusnyeara and are reliable but modern ones aren't?

We'll be getting a new kitchen at some point hopefully Inc a range oven so interested myself.

[Countdown]

We've got a Rangemaster Dual Fuel (gas Hob, grill, oven and a second electric oven on the side)

I have to admit it feels really nice but it's had a couple of faults. The door to the gas oven dropped on its hinges and the igniter on the large hob failed. I think it was £90 each time to fix. in our previous place we had a Canterbury Cannon which lasted 16 years without missing a beat.

[Turtle Shed]

We went for the cheapest Beko from AO and it has been perfect.

Gas hob, electric ovens and grill. Heats up quickly, fan not particularly noisy, looks perfectly decent.

Heat is heat, as long as the temperatures are accurate and ovens heat evenly etc. I can see little reason for spending more.

[Tim O]

Harpoon said:

........... at new Rangemaster options. Smeg looked too fussy for us. As we are on bottled LPG for the hob, we are debating going to an all electric model to do away with the gas bottles.

We have a large south facing roof, perfect for solar panels, and with some batteries installed we'd be trying to get energy neutral. Thus the fully electric cooker, and possibly an electric central heating boiler, too.

Edited by Tim O on Thursday 27th April 12:53

[CrgT16]

Lacanche for me.

Ours is all electric. It’s been excellent and most reliable.

Customer service has been second to none in our experience.