Rayburn Royale

When designing our home, we incorporated a wood-fired stove.  The main reason was that we figured we have 50 acres and plenty of trees so we would be able to harvest timber from our property in a sustainable way to fuel the stove.  Secondly, we like the idea of slow cooking.  The gentleman builder loves stews and I cannot go past a good soup, especially in autumn.  Those cold days where you cannot justify starting a fire (or turning on the heater) but want something warm and tasty for lunch are perfect soup days, in my opinion.  

Just today, I made a vegetable soup with produce generously given to us by the gentleman builder's mum.  It contained fresh organic carrots, beetroot and zucchini in stock and tinned tomato base.  Delicious!

We had been looking for a second-hand Rayburn Royale for months when the Gentleman Builder came across an ad in The Weekly Times.  I knew straight away that it was the stove for us, even though the ad was generic and did not specify the brand.

The Rayburn Royale is made by AGA and, unlike the AGA, designed for solid fuels.  I had my heart set on a white or cream model but we were getting desperate so was willing to negotiate on that point, if a stove in good condition came along.  We had a firm budget of $3000 including transport.  We had seen plenty of good Rayburns which would have come in at $3200 but we just could not afford to extend beyond the budget.  After the purchase there would be additional costs involved in repairs (inevitable when you move something that weighs 300kg and is probably 50 years old), additional parts (our roof is tall and most second-hand stoves do not come with a flue included), and installation (the water jacket needs to legally be connected by a plumber).

When the gentleman builder called the number in the ad, the news was good.  The price, including transport, would be less than we budgeted and when the photos came through, the stove was white.  We purchased and the sellers very kindly assisted us in getting the stove onto a pallet and to their local depot for collection by the trucking company.  We collected from Stoites in Welshpool where they kindly used a forklift to put it into the trailer and just had to work out how to get it safely off the trailer and into the shouse.

The gentleman builder had prepared well.  He had moved the pile of ironbark beams to fashion a ramp that was the right height for the trailer and we made a monorail to use some metal rollers to get the stove around the north and east sides of the shouse and into the front door.

Padawan and little miss were somewhat excited about the acquisition.

Part of the recycled packaging warned to bend your knees to lift the box with a weight of 10-16kg.  Funny when the stove weighs more than 300kg and with both the gentleman builder and I pushing we could barely move it until it was on rollers.

 The monorail we set up to get the stove from the trailer to the north of the house, around the east side and in through the front door.

The stove has an inbuilt hot water jacket which will boost the solar hot water in winter.  This will be plumbed in when the second fit is done.

The gentleman builder was pretty happy with the condition of the stove.  We're all looking forward to the first roast meal we cook in the 'new' stove.