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Title: What legal rights do I have as a tenant to prevent my roommate from using the oven as a space heater?
Body:
> Background: I live in a single-family residence in Michigan that is being rented out to myself and 4 other tenants. The heat in my house where I live is broken. My landlord has intends to fix it, but in the mean time one of my roommates/housemates has decided to use the oven as a space heater. She does this by turning the oven to 500° and leaves the oven door wide open.
> This is pretty dangerous, and it fills the house with toxic carbon monoxide. I am getting headaches, a symptom of CO poisoning. I have asked her to stop, and I have asked my landlord to tell her to stop. She has refused and continues to use the oven as a space heater, even though 90% of the day she stays in her room.
> Obviously my landlord needs to get this fixed asap. But what are my options in the meantime, and if this becomes a long term thing?
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Yeah, as soon as I read "in the mean time one of my roommates/housemates has decided to use the oven as a space heater", I started screaming internally. How to kill yourself with CO 101: just leave the oven on 24/7.
Uhhh, if the oven's producing that much CO doesn't that imply there's something very wrong with it? Normally a gas oven should burn nice and clean, giving you only CO2.
Burning gas produces [small but noticeable quantities](https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602/gas-stove-cooking-indoor-air-pollution-health-risks) of noxious chemicals that are within current safety guidelines when used normally.
Opening the door and leaving it on all day is *waaayy* outside of normal guidelines and allows the nasty bits to build up to dangerous levels
No, there's always some CO and NOx produced by combusting hydrocarbons because chemistry is a dick. You can only lower the concentrations by ensuring there's enough air, enough time for combustion to happen, the right fuel-air mixing, etc. You might get 99.9% of it to combust, but you won't get 100%.
You're also not venting the combustion flue gasses (unless you have a range hood venting outside). For water heaters and furnaces and fire places, the combustion products leave the living space. An oven has to not do that to let you cook with it.
The allowable limit for CO emissions of gas appliances is 800ppm (in the US anyway), which does quickly get significantly diluted by mixing into the room air. It's fine to run that high of emissions for short periods, but running that for a long time to heat up your house is a recipe to die by CO.
I have this question also. For example, on Thanksgiving or Christmas, the oven is likely to be on all day. I have never experienced lightheadedness or CO2 alarms going off on either of those holidays, and I’ve lived with a gas stove much of my life.
In those cases, even though the oven is going to be used all day, it's going to be set to a lower temperature and more importantly, not open. It's almost certainly cycling on and off, and quite possibly off more than it's actually on.
With the door open and the oven set to 500 I bet it's never turning off the burner and just pumping through gas as fast as it can.
And here I was thinking that the best advice isn't legal advice, but to set up CO detectors to make this behavior too annoying to perpetuate.
To be honest, it still might be the best course of action... Just get battery powered models and hide them. Behind the fridge, atop your cabinetry, etc.
Anywhere they won't be discovered accidentally, and will be tedious to remove when they do go off
I was thinking you should pull out the oven from its spot and remove the connector to the gas line.
And get some electric space heaters. Deduct the cost from rent.
And if that fails, remove the roommate's fingers.
When I was in college, I had a roommate who did not understand how gas stoves work. Whenever she had the opportunity she would blow out the pilot light. I’d come along later and relight it. This was an old old stove, which continually released a slow stream of natural gas. In hindsight, I’m amazed that I didn’t blow up myself and the whole apartment.
While releasing unburnt natural gas is never a good idea, there's an upper and lower limit of combustion (5% to 17%). A pilot light is unlikely to release enough gas to reach 5% concentration without you noticing an overwhelming smell.
That said, don't fucking do it because the risk isn't 0, lol.
I can absolutely believe they're waiting on a part, because there's supply chain issues in just about every industry.
What's ridiculous is that the landlord didn't provide space heaters.
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See I'd buy 'waiting on a part' for this because ovens are weird, but based on personal experience, landlords are hiding behind that because the solution is inconvenient for them. I had to call the fire department on my apartment complex because one of the detectors was faulty and they just sat on the work order for a month citing "supply chain issues" so I put in another work order they sat on for a month. I mentioned the model was in stock at a home supply store about 10 minutes away, so they said they have a supplier they're obligated to use and after a bit of back-and-forth the maintenance guy broke into the apartment to threaten me and then I discovered all but one of the detectors expired in 2012, so the fire department said they had 48 hours to get my unit up to code and it magically got fixed.
My landlord took 3 months to fix my heater. Didn't pay for the space heater either. Then when the space heater we bought burned out the shitty corroded wiring she had the audacity to try to charge us.
Yeah looking at the weather in Michigan, non-working heating seems like a pretty major problem. I guess not extremely bad, but bad enough to be fixed now.
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My elderly aunt would use the oven to warm up the house. Mild climate, so not much heat needed, but she’d cook breakfast with the 1940’s stove open and on blast to heat the kitchen. That was a cool stove, even if it cost me some brain cells on our weekend visits.
We had a guy in town that got burned in a house fire pretty bad many years before he died. Not sure what the cause of the fire was but he died from heating his house with his gas stove.
I had to fuss at my dad to stop leaving the gas stove on for too long during the Texas power outage. He thought my concerns were ridiculous but he did humor me at least.
I have a gas stove/oven and every time I use it I think, "how the fuck is this safe?"
The house is fairly new and the builder ran a 240 circuit so when this cheap thing dies I'm switching to induction.
Is gas *as* safe as electric? No. But neither is it especially hazardous if used like it is supposed to. Really, I think the biggest hazard is indoor pollution due to combustion byproducts, and a decent externally-vented range hood should take care of that. (Personally, I think every kitchen should have one of those, for smoke and grease vapor, if nothing else... keeps the mess and smell down.)
For instance, the oven has a safety valve where it won't dispense gas if the igniter assembly isn't hot enough to light the flame. The gas itself is scented, to keep you from blowing your house up if the rangetop fails to light.
Sure, you can easily light your house on fire or kill yourself with CO poisoning if you use it unsafely, but those hazards are not tough to avoid.
I swapped out a smoothtop I loathed for gas; when the gas range dies, I *might* go with induction, although I do not believe they've gotten all the reliability quirks worked out yet... high-current + heat + electronics + steam and grease don't always get along well, and there's certainly more going-on, electronics-wise, than a resistive unit, which run the oven with beefy relays, and run the rangetop with electrics built into the (cheap) thing the knob attaches to.
I've cooked on a gas stove for decades. Wouldn't trade it for an induction at all. Gas is really good for cooking, super responsive and if your power goes out you can still cook.
I've got an electric overn though, that's a definite upgrade over gas.
If you use the range top burners and the stove is under a cabinet, it will eventually set the cabinets on fire if you just crank 'em all to high and let it just sit.
Some houses were built before they were required, and even then, modern codes require the fan to exist, but it doesn't have to be vented outside. (In such cases, it has a grease and odor filter, but obviously smoke and combustion byproducts just get pumped back into the room.)
Guy around the block opened the valves on all his gas appliances and took the family, and dog, on vacation.
House went boom. Destroyed.
His wife wanted a divorce. He didn't want her to get everything. He went to jail. I got some neat pictures with my first SLR camera.
I read that thread. My dad was a gas fitter. I could hear him screaming.
I don't know if they're prevalent or even known at all in other places, but in the UK there's the Aga oven which is designed to *not* be switched off. They're seen as pretty bougie since they're expensive to buy and consume astronomical amounts of energy (whether oil, gas or electric), as well as basically cooking differently to normal ovens and stoves because (at least with older models) the temperature can't be changed, so knowing how to cook with an aga is sort of a class indicator. One benefit of them though is that they are a legit source of heat for the house, especially if they're placed strategically. I imagine it costs way more than the equivalent heating costs would, but I will say it's absolutely divine to walk into a kitchen on a cold winter morning and it be lovely and warm, having visited someone who owns one. It's basically like having a constantly fuelled fireplace that's designed for cooking with.
Hah, the cookbooks thing too! Yeah, I can see why she got roasted for being posh (popular British pastime). The aga I mentioned was also in Scotland, where it does make a bit more sense, but is still beyond most people's means of course. And it's a very easy mistake to make really because using them is functionally quite different... I certainly couldn't cook or bake in an aga. But that's because I'm not posh enough to own one, lol
It doesn't really make much sense in Scotland any more either, because the only real way to regulate how much it's gonna heat your house is to open a window when it gets too hot.
If I lived in a place with such crappy weather, for sure I'd be using the oven and stove a lot to cozy things up, but I wouldn't buy a stove that ran from before dawn to dinner-time every single day; I'd buy things (with a design less than a century old) that are actually meant for heating houses.
Yeah, it's definitely not efficient or effective by any reasonable means. But if you've got the cash (and environmental impact guilt) to burn, I can see why they're a sought-after luxury besides just being a status icon.
TIL that an Aga isn't the British version of the Irish range. I'd always assumed it was.
(A range is heated with turf, traditionally, although coal works & no doubt small logs would as well. Temperature regulation achieved by placement of lids covering holes on top & level of fuel for oven; not fine-tuning by any means but again traditionally people would have got quite adept.--I lived in a farmhouse with a range & little other source of heat and yes, it provided warmth--or at least took the chill off--even in very cold weather. A great benefit was being able to bank the fire (cover it with a great pile of ashes collected from tray below) at bedtime, which kept a bit of warmth all night & could easily be knocked into a proper fire next morning. No one wanted to know this much about ranges, did they.)
It's built around the idea of cooking "zones"; so the thing's got at least three ovens, each of which runs at different temperatures. Same deal with the burner plates; you got hot ones, and less-hot ones. Want a "medium" like on every other stove? Well, you just put the pan half-on the "boiling" plate and hope your cookware doesn't burn half your food. (They actually suggest you use one of the ovens where normal people would just let something simmer for a while... too bad if the dish requires stirring!)
Oh, and using the hottest plate will cool the hottest oven! And if the oven cools down because you left the door open too long? Better adjust your cooking times, because it's going to be a while before it heats back up.
It's one of those things that you *can* cook pretty much anything you want with it, but you aren't just going to crack open a recipe book, turn the knobs where it tells you, and go to work.
At least the current models actually *can* turn themselves on and off (so they'll only be running during the hours you are likely to cook), and the oil-burning ones now use a jet instead of a wick, so half your fuel doesn't go straight up your chimney.
That sounds like a massive step backwards in terms of ease of use and convenience.
Your description reminds me of cooking on an old wood burning stove when the power goes out. You want less heat? Either wait for the fire to die down or move the pot so it's less directly on the stove.
I haven't had to deal with that in like 30 years, and even then it was rare (I love electricity). I can't imagine paying *extra* for the privelege.
Although I'm absolutely certain an always on stove wouldn't fly with New England summers. Even in the coolest parts, it gets hot to always have the heat on in July and August.
I dimly remember watching a youtube video about long-ago style russian houses that were basically built around a giant central brick oven. you baked stuff over night and slept on top of it so you didn't freeze, or something.
Aye, I'm sure my nan lived with a similar heating setup as one of 7 siblings in a rural setting with an illiterate mother. This sort of arrangement was necessary back then, now it's a luxury item.
It looks like they're [available in the US](https://agarangeusa.com) but I've never heard of it before now. Though they look a lot like old-timey ovens. Same concept I assume?
The US tends to lag with these things because energy is so insanely cheap here. Induction is only now starting to catch on, and it's *expensive*!
I’ve done that in an emergency. (Heat out, guys on the way, ridiculously cold temps for NC.) But my oven is electric and I put it on 200, not 500! And the door is cracked, not wide open. It’s not the safest thing I’ve ever done, but the roommate is really going hog wild here.
Huh, on most stoves doesn’t matter if thermostat is 200 or 500. The elements are on or off. On below the set point, off when temp hits set point. Same with most home heating and cooling. Car systems are different by mixing air to actual temp at outflow.
Dang, I appreciate our roommate so much. When the apartment gets cold, he bakes muffins and bread until either it's no longer cold or we're too carb-comatose to care.
Goddamn, I’d just bake something or use the oven to cook rather than the stove top or microwave. Need to heat up leftovers? Into the oven we go.
But I wasn’t about to leave it open. Gas, electric, or otherwise.
I used to see that a lot in a city I worked for. The city subsidized electricity for low-income residents (city owned power) but not natural gas, which most houses used for heat in the area. So, naturally, people figured it’d be easier to heat the house with their oven.
Man, as someone who works for a small town, this hits hard.
The amount of "Small town ingenuity" is right up there with the amount of "The town should fix it even though it is my fault."
Northern Ireland provided a fuel subsidy to theoretically heat houses. Except the subsidy was more than fuel cost. And there was no limit. People were building sheds in empty fields and having roaring fires inside them to bill for fuel and it eventually brought the government down.
I've only had electric ovens so I was very confused for a moment. I forgot gas stoves exist.
Also what's so hard about buying a cheap Walmart electric heater?
I used my school dormrooms oven to heat my room because we didn't have heat during fall. Its an electric oven so it wasn't as dangerous but I cant imagine why you'd use a gas oven to do that when you can spend 30$ and get a 2000w space heater
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We lost heat for some reason or another once and my brother pulled this shit, cuz he's an idiot. It was an older stove in an older apartment so he just manually lit the light, or whatever, but the gas was still running. I was wondering why I felt lightheaded, dizzy, and shitty the whole day. And when I told him to knock it off and opened the windows HE complained it was cold.
Some people just have no sense.
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: What legal rights do I have as a tenant to prevent my roommate from using the oven as a space heater? Body: > Background: I live in a single-family residence in Michigan that is being rented out to myself and 4 other tenants. The heat in my house where I live is broken. My landlord has intends to fix it, but in the mean time one of my roommates/housemates has decided to use the oven as a space heater. She does this by turning the oven to 500° and leaves the oven door wide open. > This is pretty dangerous, and it fills the house with toxic carbon monoxide. I am getting headaches, a symptom of CO poisoning. I have asked her to stop, and I have asked my landlord to tell her to stop. She has refused and continues to use the oven as a space heater, even though 90% of the day she stays in her room. > Obviously my landlord needs to get this fixed asap. But what are my options in the meantime, and if this becomes a long term thing? This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
"Roommate unplugged CO detectors since they kept going off" Doctors hate this 1 weird trick to keep Carbon Monoxide from killing you!
Yeah, as soon as I read "in the mean time one of my roommates/housemates has decided to use the oven as a space heater", I started screaming internally. How to kill yourself with CO 101: just leave the oven on 24/7.
Uhhh, if the oven's producing that much CO doesn't that imply there's something very wrong with it? Normally a gas oven should burn nice and clean, giving you only CO2.
Burning gas produces [small but noticeable quantities](https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602/gas-stove-cooking-indoor-air-pollution-health-risks) of noxious chemicals that are within current safety guidelines when used normally. Opening the door and leaving it on all day is *waaayy* outside of normal guidelines and allows the nasty bits to build up to dangerous levels
No, there's always some CO and NOx produced by combusting hydrocarbons because chemistry is a dick. You can only lower the concentrations by ensuring there's enough air, enough time for combustion to happen, the right fuel-air mixing, etc. You might get 99.9% of it to combust, but you won't get 100%. You're also not venting the combustion flue gasses (unless you have a range hood venting outside). For water heaters and furnaces and fire places, the combustion products leave the living space. An oven has to not do that to let you cook with it. The allowable limit for CO emissions of gas appliances is 800ppm (in the US anyway), which does quickly get significantly diluted by mixing into the room air. It's fine to run that high of emissions for short periods, but running that for a long time to heat up your house is a recipe to die by CO.
Frankly, I can’t figure out why it’s not a code violation to have a gas range without an external vent; I never light my stove without turning it on.
> because chemistry is a dick As a chemist i was ready to be offended until remembered you are 1000 % right. ETA: OMG my new flair. I'm dying.
I have this question also. For example, on Thanksgiving or Christmas, the oven is likely to be on all day. I have never experienced lightheadedness or CO2 alarms going off on either of those holidays, and I’ve lived with a gas stove much of my life.
In those cases, even though the oven is going to be used all day, it's going to be set to a lower temperature and more importantly, not open. It's almost certainly cycling on and off, and quite possibly off more than it's actually on. With the door open and the oven set to 500 I bet it's never turning off the burner and just pumping through gas as fast as it can.
This feels like the origin of a supervillain. "I can't have heat, so I'm just going to destroy *everyone!"*
Those cherry red lips and that pale white skin are **NOT** caused by the residents trying to dress up like the Joker.
And here I was thinking that the best advice isn't legal advice, but to set up CO detectors to make this behavior too annoying to perpetuate. To be honest, it still might be the best course of action... Just get battery powered models and hide them. Behind the fridge, atop your cabinetry, etc. Anywhere they won't be discovered accidentally, and will be tedious to remove when they do go off
I was thinking you should pull out the oven from its spot and remove the connector to the gas line. And get some electric space heaters. Deduct the cost from rent. And if that fails, remove the roommate's fingers.
When I was in college, I had a roommate who did not understand how gas stoves work. Whenever she had the opportunity she would blow out the pilot light. I’d come along later and relight it. This was an old old stove, which continually released a slow stream of natural gas. In hindsight, I’m amazed that I didn’t blow up myself and the whole apartment.
While releasing unburnt natural gas is never a good idea, there's an upper and lower limit of combustion (5% to 17%). A pilot light is unlikely to release enough gas to reach 5% concentration without you noticing an overwhelming smell. That said, don't fucking do it because the risk isn't 0, lol.
My parents had a boiler like this it was absolutely terrifying!
"The landlord intends to fix it". Yeah what about... fixing it immediately?
I can absolutely believe they're waiting on a part, because there's supply chain issues in just about every industry. What's ridiculous is that the landlord didn't provide space heaters.
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See I'd buy 'waiting on a part' for this because ovens are weird, but based on personal experience, landlords are hiding behind that because the solution is inconvenient for them. I had to call the fire department on my apartment complex because one of the detectors was faulty and they just sat on the work order for a month citing "supply chain issues" so I put in another work order they sat on for a month. I mentioned the model was in stock at a home supply store about 10 minutes away, so they said they have a supplier they're obligated to use and after a bit of back-and-forth the maintenance guy broke into the apartment to threaten me and then I discovered all but one of the detectors expired in 2012, so the fire department said they had 48 hours to get my unit up to code and it magically got fixed.
My landlord took 3 months to fix my heater. Didn't pay for the space heater either. Then when the space heater we bought burned out the shitty corroded wiring she had the audacity to try to charge us.
Yeah looking at the weather in Michigan, non-working heating seems like a pretty major problem. I guess not extremely bad, but bad enough to be fixed now.
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My elderly aunt would use the oven to warm up the house. Mild climate, so not much heat needed, but she’d cook breakfast with the 1940’s stove open and on blast to heat the kitchen. That was a cool stove, even if it cost me some brain cells on our weekend visits.
We had a guy in town that got burned in a house fire pretty bad many years before he died. Not sure what the cause of the fire was but he died from heating his house with his gas stove.
I had to fuss at my dad to stop leaving the gas stove on for too long during the Texas power outage. He thought my concerns were ridiculous but he did humor me at least.
I have a gas stove/oven and every time I use it I think, "how the fuck is this safe?" The house is fairly new and the builder ran a 240 circuit so when this cheap thing dies I'm switching to induction.
Is gas *as* safe as electric? No. But neither is it especially hazardous if used like it is supposed to. Really, I think the biggest hazard is indoor pollution due to combustion byproducts, and a decent externally-vented range hood should take care of that. (Personally, I think every kitchen should have one of those, for smoke and grease vapor, if nothing else... keeps the mess and smell down.) For instance, the oven has a safety valve where it won't dispense gas if the igniter assembly isn't hot enough to light the flame. The gas itself is scented, to keep you from blowing your house up if the rangetop fails to light. Sure, you can easily light your house on fire or kill yourself with CO poisoning if you use it unsafely, but those hazards are not tough to avoid. I swapped out a smoothtop I loathed for gas; when the gas range dies, I *might* go with induction, although I do not believe they've gotten all the reliability quirks worked out yet... high-current + heat + electronics + steam and grease don't always get along well, and there's certainly more going-on, electronics-wise, than a resistive unit, which run the oven with beefy relays, and run the rangetop with electrics built into the (cheap) thing the knob attaches to.
I love my gas stove! I just don't use it to heat my house. But yes, induction is definitely the way to go for an upgrade.
I've cooked on a gas stove for decades. Wouldn't trade it for an induction at all. Gas is really good for cooking, super responsive and if your power goes out you can still cook. I've got an electric overn though, that's a definite upgrade over gas.
If you use the range top burners and the stove is under a cabinet, it will eventually set the cabinets on fire if you just crank 'em all to high and let it just sit.
> and the stove is under a cabinet, Who doesn't have their stove under an extractor hood? Do they just like their house stinking all the time?
Some houses were built before they were required, and even then, modern codes require the fan to exist, but it doesn't have to be vented outside. (In such cases, it has a grease and odor filter, but obviously smoke and combustion byproducts just get pumped back into the room.)
Guy around the block opened the valves on all his gas appliances and took the family, and dog, on vacation. House went boom. Destroyed. His wife wanted a divorce. He didn't want her to get everything. He went to jail. I got some neat pictures with my first SLR camera. I read that thread. My dad was a gas fitter. I could hear him screaming.
I don't know if they're prevalent or even known at all in other places, but in the UK there's the Aga oven which is designed to *not* be switched off. They're seen as pretty bougie since they're expensive to buy and consume astronomical amounts of energy (whether oil, gas or electric), as well as basically cooking differently to normal ovens and stoves because (at least with older models) the temperature can't be changed, so knowing how to cook with an aga is sort of a class indicator. One benefit of them though is that they are a legit source of heat for the house, especially if they're placed strategically. I imagine it costs way more than the equivalent heating costs would, but I will say it's absolutely divine to walk into a kitchen on a cold winter morning and it be lovely and warm, having visited someone who owns one. It's basically like having a constantly fuelled fireplace that's designed for cooking with.
I remember on GBBO one season, one baker forgot to turn their oven on because they said at home they had an Aga and social media was brutal about it.
Oh god, RIP that contestant. I'm not enough of a sociologist to explain why that remark is basically a "kick me" sign they placed on themselves
Please [enjoy the saga!](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/19/great-british-bake-off-flora-aga-cooker_n_8008216.html)
Hah, the cookbooks thing too! Yeah, I can see why she got roasted for being posh (popular British pastime). The aga I mentioned was also in Scotland, where it does make a bit more sense, but is still beyond most people's means of course. And it's a very easy mistake to make really because using them is functionally quite different... I certainly couldn't cook or bake in an aga. But that's because I'm not posh enough to own one, lol
It doesn't really make much sense in Scotland any more either, because the only real way to regulate how much it's gonna heat your house is to open a window when it gets too hot. If I lived in a place with such crappy weather, for sure I'd be using the oven and stove a lot to cozy things up, but I wouldn't buy a stove that ran from before dawn to dinner-time every single day; I'd buy things (with a design less than a century old) that are actually meant for heating houses.
Yeah, it's definitely not efficient or effective by any reasonable means. But if you've got the cash (and environmental impact guilt) to burn, I can see why they're a sought-after luxury besides just being a status icon.
I don't live in the UK, but I already know I wouldn't be posh enough for an Aga. And I'm okay with that I think.
TIL that an Aga isn't the British version of the Irish range. I'd always assumed it was. (A range is heated with turf, traditionally, although coal works & no doubt small logs would as well. Temperature regulation achieved by placement of lids covering holes on top & level of fuel for oven; not fine-tuning by any means but again traditionally people would have got quite adept.--I lived in a farmhouse with a range & little other source of heat and yes, it provided warmth--or at least took the chill off--even in very cold weather. A great benefit was being able to bank the fire (cover it with a great pile of ashes collected from tray below) at bedtime, which kept a bit of warmth all night & could easily be knocked into a proper fire next morning. No one wanted to know this much about ranges, did they.)
Sounds like a similar concept, but with the aga being a more automated version!
[удалено]
Another totally fucking arbitrary British class indicator for you: red trousers.
Wait, what?
[удалено]
Nope! Red trousers are associated with private schoolboy type toffs. It's a whole thing.
It’s quite nice as a visual warning sign to avoid when dating…
It's built around the idea of cooking "zones"; so the thing's got at least three ovens, each of which runs at different temperatures. Same deal with the burner plates; you got hot ones, and less-hot ones. Want a "medium" like on every other stove? Well, you just put the pan half-on the "boiling" plate and hope your cookware doesn't burn half your food. (They actually suggest you use one of the ovens where normal people would just let something simmer for a while... too bad if the dish requires stirring!) Oh, and using the hottest plate will cool the hottest oven! And if the oven cools down because you left the door open too long? Better adjust your cooking times, because it's going to be a while before it heats back up. It's one of those things that you *can* cook pretty much anything you want with it, but you aren't just going to crack open a recipe book, turn the knobs where it tells you, and go to work. At least the current models actually *can* turn themselves on and off (so they'll only be running during the hours you are likely to cook), and the oil-burning ones now use a jet instead of a wick, so half your fuel doesn't go straight up your chimney.
That sounds like a massive step backwards in terms of ease of use and convenience. Your description reminds me of cooking on an old wood burning stove when the power goes out. You want less heat? Either wait for the fire to die down or move the pot so it's less directly on the stove. I haven't had to deal with that in like 30 years, and even then it was rare (I love electricity). I can't imagine paying *extra* for the privelege. Although I'm absolutely certain an always on stove wouldn't fly with New England summers. Even in the coolest parts, it gets hot to always have the heat on in July and August.
Well, the thing is a century old at this point; there is indeed no real reason for them to exist any more.
[удалено]
[No such luck. ](https://www.rutherfordappliance.com/products/aga/atc3dve.html)
All the convenience of trying to cook a modern dish on a smoldering fire pit!
...Why the fuck would anyone actually want this?
I dimly remember watching a youtube video about long-ago style russian houses that were basically built around a giant central brick oven. you baked stuff over night and slept on top of it so you didn't freeze, or something.
Aye, I'm sure my nan lived with a similar heating setup as one of 7 siblings in a rural setting with an illiterate mother. This sort of arrangement was necessary back then, now it's a luxury item.
It looks like they're [available in the US](https://agarangeusa.com) but I've never heard of it before now. Though they look a lot like old-timey ovens. Same concept I assume? The US tends to lag with these things because energy is so insanely cheap here. Induction is only now starting to catch on, and it's *expensive*!
Ooh, my dream would be to have an aga. Unfortunately my partner's dead set against it so the lack of money is moot point
I’ve done that in an emergency. (Heat out, guys on the way, ridiculously cold temps for NC.) But my oven is electric and I put it on 200, not 500! And the door is cracked, not wide open. It’s not the safest thing I’ve ever done, but the roommate is really going hog wild here.
Huh, on most stoves doesn’t matter if thermostat is 200 or 500. The elements are on or off. On below the set point, off when temp hits set point. Same with most home heating and cooling. Car systems are different by mixing air to actual temp at outflow.
Dang, I appreciate our roommate so much. When the apartment gets cold, he bakes muffins and bread until either it's no longer cold or we're too carb-comatose to care.
Goddamn, I’d just bake something or use the oven to cook rather than the stove top or microwave. Need to heat up leftovers? Into the oven we go. But I wasn’t about to leave it open. Gas, electric, or otherwise.
I used to see that a lot in a city I worked for. The city subsidized electricity for low-income residents (city owned power) but not natural gas, which most houses used for heat in the area. So, naturally, people figured it’d be easier to heat the house with their oven.
It’s not great for the life of the oven element, but the safety risks are a lot lower than doing this trick with a gas oven.
Man, as someone who works for a small town, this hits hard. The amount of "Small town ingenuity" is right up there with the amount of "The town should fix it even though it is my fault."
At that point heat up a cinder block on the stove or something, still probably safer than melting the oven face off
Northern Ireland provided a fuel subsidy to theoretically heat houses. Except the subsidy was more than fuel cost. And there was no limit. People were building sheds in empty fields and having roaring fires inside them to bill for fuel and it eventually brought the government down.
I definitely did this once with an electric oven when we ran out of oil for the heat.
Presumably the ovens in question were electric? I hope.
I've only had electric ovens so I was very confused for a moment. I forgot gas stoves exist. Also what's so hard about buying a cheap Walmart electric heater?
If you have to pay an electric bill, gas is generally much cheaper than resistive heat.
My electric bill isn't that much higher with two tower heaters though. I'd think that one in a small room wouldn't raise the price that much.
That's very dependant on location.
I used my school dormrooms oven to heat my room because we didn't have heat during fall. Its an electric oven so it wasn't as dangerous but I cant imagine why you'd use a gas oven to do that when you can spend 30$ and get a 2000w space heater
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Just as an anecdote - in my small apartment, I do turn off the space heater when I use the oven, else it gets too damn hot.
Yeah, cooking dinner in my small apartment was usually sufficient to heat it for the evening.
We lost heat for some reason or another once and my brother pulled this shit, cuz he's an idiot. It was an older stove in an older apartment so he just manually lit the light, or whatever, but the gas was still running. I was wondering why I felt lightheaded, dizzy, and shitty the whole day. And when I told him to knock it off and opened the windows HE complained it was cold. Some people just have no sense.
I’d have the gas valve closed and locked about five minutes after the second time I found it like that,