Things to Consider

Here are some Guidelines to help you decide which Thornhill Range Cooker is best for you.

Fuel
For a more detailed breakdown of the different benefits of each fuel option, please click here. Some questions to bear in mind are:

• Do I live near a readily available source of wood?
• Do I want my choice of range to be carbon neutral?
• Do I want my range running costs to be a minimal as possible?
• Would I like to be able to have a range with a window through which I can see logs burning?
• Do I want a range with as minimal intervention as possible (logs & pellets have to be added manually)?

Range size
We have designed the Thornhill Range in mind to give you as many options as possible. If you have plenty of space and are regularly cooking for a family or guests, then a 5-oven hybrid is meant for you.

Where size is a consideration, or you don’t simply don’t require much oven space, then a 3-oven range in a choice of wood, wood pellets, oil, gas or electric is ideal.

If you do not have a radiator or underfloor heating in your kitchen and want to use the cooker to heat, think about alternatives to electric ranges.

Click here for our Thornhill Range Virtual Cooker Configurator to see what your range can look like.

Boiler-cooker Ranges
The old concept of a cooker/boiler is now virtually dead. The water boiler/jacket tends to take most of the heat/energy so you had to run them hard to get the oven to cooking temperature. To get round this Stanley was the first to fit 2 burners, in effect a cooker and a boiler in the same case. Would you fit a dishwasher and a washing machine in the same case, there is no advantage.

1. You do not get free hot water with a boiler-cooker: This is one of the misconceptions about a boiler cooker. The boiler contained within any range boiler-cooker system is relatively small – it has to be in order to fit into the range.
2. A condensing boiler will save up to 20% on your fuel bill, depending on your existing boiler. They also produce less CO2/kW, but condensing boilers require more servicing. Access is often very limited when fitted into a range unit.
3. It is cheaper to buy and to run a separate boiler and single burner range unit (especially the Thornhill ranges which have three ovens) than to buy a combined boiler-cooker unit.
4. They are difficult and expensive to service, as there isn’t much room for manoeuvre and they tend to use non-standard parts.
5. The range unit is limited to two ovens as the boiler unit takes the place of the third oven.
6. All units with a larger boiler are non-condensing, making them even more expensive to run. It is much cheaper to have a separate boiler and cooker, cheaper to buy and cheaper to run & cheaper to service.