technical details, how-to, tips, faqs, etc.
I’ve been experimenting with cheap ways to improve lo-cost wood-fired earthen ovens. How can I make mud denser, harder, and more durable? Without going to bricks and/or spending a lotta dough? Adding sand to mud reduces shrink and increases density. But clay and sand are generally still less dense (hold …
Is it made of earth or brick? This is a common distinction in the world of wood-fired ovens and comes with a whole slew of assumptions. “Earth ovens are cheaper, easier to build but less durable.” “Brick ovens are expensive, harder to build but more professional and will last longer.” …
Jon and Flip Anderson have been working with stoves and ovens for some years now (HPP regulars may remember their rocket powered oven design.) Last February, they helped teach at the Winter Stove Workshop put on by Aprovecho and InStove. Aprovecho Research Center (ARC) was consulting for Mercy Corps in …
Kiko Denzer and I were hired to build a heater in a greenhouse for some very avid gardeners. They had experimented with using a wood stove but there simply wasn’t enough heat retained for the stove to heat the greenhouse from one day to the next throughout the winter. Our task was to incorporate the old wood stove, mostly taking advantage of the glass door and firebox it offered, and plug it into a system with channels and enough mass to absorb sufficient warmth to heat the greenhouse with one firing a day. This article chronicles that build and the results.
I have recently built three single-skin masonry heaters in Argentina using unfired bricks and would like to share some thoughts and an account of the experience. All three were based on the design presented by Alex Chernov at the 2012 MHA Annual Meeting at WildAcres, with minor modifications to accomodate …
Jon and Flip Anderson have been working with Aprovecho Research Institute and building smokeless cookstoves in Haiti. They came up with this neat “rocket oven” design that answers some of the questions I get from folks about combining the dome oven design w/rocket technology. By simply using clay and organic …
Here’s a little video showing the construction of a super-insulated restaurant oven. The “basket” design seems to be a pretty inexpensive and effective way to insulate — not necessary for every oven, but for ones that really get regular use, I think it’s worth it… It’s a pretty big oven, …
Muddy Creek charter school in Philomath commissioned this mud project as the initial step in creating an “outdoor classroom.” All 60 kids, K-5, participated in 2 days of playdough brainstorming and design, and six days of mud. Parents and neighbors contributed random prunings of willow, fruitwood, and forsythia that we …
Insulate! Insulate! Insulate! This oven gets used about 5 days a week, so it never cools down — partly thanks to 11″ of insulation under the hearth (vertical wine bottles in perlite), and about 8″ of loose perlite over the dome (poured into a basket made of bamboo covered in …
Hand Print Press has published a new book about a hybrid style of wood-fired oven called a Barrel Oven! Build Your Own Barrel Oven A Guide for Making a Versatile, Efficient, and Easy to Use Wood-Fired Oven The tools for a sustainable future continue to grow! In this book, Max …
