Sustainability and environmental impact
Our ethos is that if something is built to a high specification in the first instance then it will have not only had a long service life but it can be repaired if required. Most of the ranges we restore are 100+ years old and have already out lasted generations of users. Once a range leaves our workshops they are fit to serve future generations.
For this reason, we believe ‘built to last’ should be the mantra of anyone serious about sustainability in manufacture.
Antique cooking ranges are appliances conceived of in a very different world to our own, though we believe our domestic history is worth protecting and preserving. In fact most of our known history pertains to ‘above stairs’, the upper classes, and not to ‘below stairs’ or common living conditions. It’s for this reason we’re so passionate about the history of kitchen ranges.
They were designed for the use of solid fuel, and would have originally been powered by house coal. Now we advise our clients they can use their ranges, stoves and grates with kiln dried or well seasoned wood, and the occasional scoop of smokeless fuel to keep the fire in overnight or gain a high oven temperature.
Sustainability and our environmental impact has always been important to us, and we strive to continually improve our energy efficiency and use of renewable and recycled materials, to offset the minimal use of non-renewables in the manufacture and service life of a kitchen range.
For example, the power for our workshops comes from Green Energy, we use 100% recycled packaging materials, and are almost 100% paper free.
We also only use Lime in our installations, Lime creates 20% less CO2 than Portland cement in its manufacture and unlike cement absorbs CO2 whilst setting so is close to carbon neutral. Portland cement is used on request when required for historical purposes.
Metals of all types are almost infinitely recyclable. We use 100% recycled iron and brass for our castings, specially selected by the foundryman for its quality. Coupled with the craft of the foundryman it follows that the castings we produce are of exceptional quality and will last for generations to come. The remelting of existing iron and yellow metal stocks uses dramatically less energy than its manufacture from first principles.