In all the many hours I spent scouring online reviews and technical specifications for cookers, as well as visiting actual real world appliance suppliers, it never once occurred to me to check the amperage required. More fool me.
I found a lovely Stoves cooker (DF600SIDOM, above) that seemed to fulfill my criteria of being energy efficient, attractive and dual fuel. It arrived, but then sat in my living room for several weeks, unpacked but unmoving, gathering dust. When it finally came time to install it, the builder noticed that it required 30 amp wiring. It seems that standard wiring into a home is 15 amp, and that was all I had. As you can imagine, plugging a 30 amp appliance into 15 amp wiring is bad news of the highest order. A phrase something like ‘burning out the wiring’ was used. Bad.
I had two choices. Either send back the cooker and try to find one which could work off the 15 amp ring main, or have a 30 amp cable wired all the way from the fuse box, over 10m away under floorboards which had only just been fixed down. I couldn’t bear to send back the cooker, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find an alternative I was as happy with. So I went for the latter option, and paid my builder/electrician a whole day’s rates to redo the wiring. The cooker suddenly seemed like less of a bargain, I can tell you.
There is a happy ending to this cautionary tale in that I am very pleased with the cooker, how it looks and how it works. However, don’t be like fixingitup – remember to check that your electrics can handle whatever you need to plug into them!
Fixing It Up 