Build a Barrel Oven at Sweet Briar Farm in Sebastopol, CA

Sebastian and Jeanna are getting married! This oven will be a part of their wedding celebration and then will live on to cook meals for their family and friends. Come learn how to make a beautiful wood-fired oven, at this beautiful homestead, in which to bake delicious bread and so much more.

For more information and to register for this hands-on workshop,
Contact Eva Edleson- eva@firespeaking.com

• Learn more about the Wood-Fired Barrel Oven

• Watch a video! Barrel Oven with workshop students in Asheville, NC

• The Barrel Oven at Vistara, part of an urban EcoVillage

• Pizza Party in the Dabbeni Barrel Oven

Year: 1988
Make: Chevy
Model: P30
Mileage: 143,000
Fuel: Diesel
Axel: Dual

I bought it from another builder 4 years ago.  During this time, I had the automatic transmission completely rebuilt, a new tie-rod/drag link installed, break lines replaced, wiring for lights updated, oil changes on schedule….
The title is clean and ready to pass over to its new owner.
$3200 is a fair price. Firm.
Serious inquiries can email or call (541) 964-3536.

Learn how to build your own super-insulated, wood-fired, earthen oven!

Learn how to make an oven to cook bread, pizza, cookies, cakes, pies, casseroles, stews, and so much more!

Wise Acres Farm is a beautiful place and home to Dr. Sharol Tilgner, author of “Herbal Medicine from the Heart of the Earth”!

Check out this from her website-

“Wise Acres Farm is an educational farm where the mind expands and the soul is nourished. Our mission is to connect people in the city with farm life.  The farms educational focus is on growing food and herbs. At Wise Acres you can meet and become familiar with over 200 herbs. We teach herb classes for the beginner as well as the advanced student. There is something for everyone at Wise Acres. To get more information on classes click here.”

For more information or to register for this workshop, contact
Sharol Tilgner- class@herbaltransitions.com

Join us for this workshop and learn how to make a super insulated,
WOOD-FIRED OVEN oven to cook bread, pizza, cookies, cakes, pies,
casseroles, stews, and so much more!

Click on poster to view.
To register and for more info contact Nick Freidman- duckpondpotter@gmail.com

Join us for a free workshop on how to make and apply
earthen plasters to Portland’s first code approved straw-clay retrofit!

Contact me, Eva for more information.

I have just posted this article about recent research on rocket mass heaters to Hand Print Press with this same title. It is a synthesis that I have been wanting to write for some time since the experiences at the MHA gatherings have been so rich.  I’ve wanted to make sure that others could benefit from the research and discoveries that we have been making there.

Here is the Article’s Table of Contents to give you a sense of it:

• The Difference between Rocket Stoves and Rocket Mass Heaters
• The Book on Rocket Mass Heaters
• The MHA Experience
• Construction Processes with Commentary
• Rocket Mass Heater Build at WildAcres 2009
• Masonry Rocket Mass Heater at WildAcres 2010
• Impromptu Rocket Mass Heater at WildAcres2011
• Conclusion
• Some Links for Further Reading

We built this wood-fired oven in Bali for Max’s parents using local bricks, clays, sands and fibers. The oven joins the traditional paon (cookstove) that Max built a few years ago.

This oven features ample wood storage for both units, a metal firing door and a wooden door for baking. (Stay tuned for an article about firing doors and efficiency in wood-fired ovens.)

It is always a fun challenge to apply our knowledge of ovens and natural building to local materials. The clay for this oven comes from a village roof tile factory scrap pile and the sand and stone came from a nearby volcano. We found an incredibly porous lava stone to insulate underneath the hearth floor and surrounded the oven’s thermal layer with a mixture that included rice hulls and thatching grass.

Note the sand used to make the smooth inside shape and the sculpted “squirrel tail” to jog the chimney. Upon finishing the oven, we cooked for a three day “Live-Culture Cuisine” fermentation workshop led by Sandor Katz and Mary Jane Edleson.

Many delicious feasts ahead!

Learn to Build Your Own Earth Oven!

Click on events below to learn more.

• EARTH OVEN IN BALI
  Building a wood-fired oven for our family.
  Ubud, Bali – Feb 7-15, 2012

• LIVE-CULTURE CUISINE FERMENTATION WORKSHOP W/
  MARY JANE EDLESON & SANDOR KATZ
  We will be the chefs at this incredible 3-day workshop.
  Ubud, Bali – Feb 17-19 2012

• NATURAL PLASTERS WORKSHOP AT PRI
  Join us for a free workshop on how to make and apply
  earthen plasters to Portland’s first code approved straw-clay retrofit!
  Portland, OR – March 25-26, 2012

• OVEN BUILDING WORKSHOP AT THE DUCKPOND POTTERY
  Learn how to build a super insulated wood-fired oven…
  IN THE SHAPE OF A GUITAR!
  Brevard, NC – April 14-15, 2012

• MASONRY HEATER ASSOC. ANNUAL GATHERING
  Our fourth year attending THE gathering of professional
  heater and oven builders.
  Little Switzerland, NC – April 16-22, 2012

• WOOD-FIRED BARREL OVEN WORKSHOP
  Create a masterpiece of gourmet outdoor cookery on this
  beautiful family farm nestled in the Swannanoa River Valley.
  Swannanoa, NC – April 26-29, 2012

• NATURAL PLASTERS, PAINTS & PIGMENTS WORKSHOP
  Learn traditional methods to make and apply earthen
  plasters and paint. Make your walls beautiful!
  Bandon, OR – July 16-17, 2012

• THE VILLAGE BUILDING CONVERGENCE
  An annual ten-day placemaking festival with free hands-on natural building education! Come to SE 8th and Sharret for the 3rd phase of Portland’s first code-approved straw-clay retrofit. Large scale cob sculpture, natural plasters and clay paints.
  Portland, OR – May 25- June 3, 2012

• BUILD A BARREL OVEN AT SWEET BRIAR FARM
  Sebastian and Jeanna are getting married! This oven will be a part of their wedding celebration and then will live on to cook meals for their family and friends. Come learn how to make a beautiful oven in which to bake delicious bread and so much more. Contact eva@firespeaking.com to register/learn more.

• COMPLETE COB / REMODELING WITH COB
  Learn to make and build with cob- foundations, walls, windows, doors, arches, roofs, details, shelving, furniture, earthen floors and more! This special 9-day intensive class not only covers all aspects of building with cob but also how to retrofit a building with straw-clay.
  Bandon, OR – July 7- 15, 2012

• APROVECHO’S SUSTAINABLE SHELTER WORKSHOP SERIES
  A 7 week course designed to empower participants with the ability to design/build/renovate their own home using simple techniques and natural, vernacular materials. Learn to build from the ground up!
  Cottage Grove, OR – July 30- Sept 14, 2012

• OVEN BUILDING WORKSHOP AT WISE ACRES FARM
  Learn how to build and use an earth oven (to cook anything in!)
  at an amazing farm!
  Pleasant Hill, OR – August 25-26, 2012

• URBAN PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE
  Come learn more about food systems and forest gardening, natural building techniques, urban ecology and foraging, plant propagation and grafting techniques, small scale energy systems, soil remediation, water harvesting, and community mapping and collaborative design methods.
  Portland, OR – 8 weekends between June and Oct, 2012

Aprovecho’s Sustainable Shelter Workshop Series
Hear from students and staff about this unique hand-on education and training program.

This heater was built for a family who live near Eugene, OR.  It features a see-through firebox, heated bench and a bake oven.  The outside skin is laid with Montana Bitterroot ledge stone with Three Rivers stone detailing the bake oven arch.  We cast, poured and and polished the bench which includes special embedded stones and fossils.

The heater has a compact, responsive design which serves as a partial wall between living and dining room spaces.  It could have many different facing looks, occupies an area of 48″ x 48″ and stands 6 1/2′ tall.

Read More….

• What is a masonry heater?
• See other heaters in our portfolio
• Join our mailing list to receive updates on projects and workshops

Thanks to Greenleaf Design Build for their good organization and excellent
craftsmanship which allowed our work to flow together seamlessly with their’s.

From: Max Edleson max (at) firespeaking.com
To: MHAmembers@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 07:52:43 -0800
Subject: Re: [MHAmembers] member news

Indeed, Alex, the article you have written is great and this area of research you are pointing to is very exciting.

The issues you bring up are excellent. I would like to try to add to what you have written.

As far as advantages of the rocket stove, the idea for those inclined to do things themselves to be able to build their own heating system without too much expense and without too many necessary tools is one that is very exciting – one that ignites a passion. The relative simplicity of the rocket stove design with few specific and basic parameters, allows for a great deal of customization and flexibility in design which is also very exciting and often practical when placing a heater into a space and further fuels the doers interest and passion in building it.

The particular combination of immediate heat at a usable rate and stored heat at an impressive rate of accumulation is also an area that the normal rocket mass heater design really shines in.

The bench is a wonderful aspect of the design. Both from a comfort standpoint of being able to sit your butt and back on soft, penetrating heat and also from a social perspective. I think most of us who have experienced the benches from the last couple of years at Wild Acres have experienced this.

Novelty also always has its appeal, at least to a certain sector of society!

But then there are many significant disadvantages, most of which you have pointed out. The subfloor: the rocket mass heater, as developed by Ianto Evans, evolved from experimentation in cob buildings where the heaters are built on grade (on some combination of compacted earth, gravel, and sometimes an adobe-like subfloor). Similar to the conditions of a concrete slab on grade that is found in many garages, for example. So you have a nice, solid, load-bearing floor that is also non-combustible that you can spread your design out on. This is essentially the opposite of how most homes are built in north america: light, lofted, insulated and combustible floors. This point, as you point out, ends up being pretty essential to design considerations as an on-grade subfloor generally would suggest the possibility of letting a heater’s design spread out while a joisted wooden floor with a foundation coming through the middle of it tends to suggest a more compact layout to minimize the size of the foundation and related expenses (especially in a retrofit).

Also, as you say, the user experience of a rocket stove can be summarized as finicky, at best. I have seen several rocket stoves that have been the core of people’s homes and worked very well day in and day out. I have seen others that worked ok and I have seen a surprising amount that don’t work so well or at all. The flexibility of design, the do-it-yourself style and, significantly, the fact that many I have seen were built in very-rushed workshops leads to an unpredictability that is often difficult to diagnose once things are sealed up if they don’t work. This can be very challenging.

Also, general rocket mass heater design so far has under-emphasized the importance of cleanouts, particularly in bench designs with bends in them. It is a process to remove the barrel and re-seal it, if and when this is necessary. And a plastered cob bench can require significant maintenance, at least bi-annual.

So, all these things have left me also in search of incorporating the advantages experienced from rocket mass heaters with all of the experience and advantages that comes from masonry heater building.

One note on hardware and expenses. I have come to realize that the door is the significant technnology that fundamentally distinguishes open fireplaces from masonry heaters. eg., that reduces the amount of air entering the combustion chamber so that it can not only be efficient but also be throttled in such a way that the combustion and long tail of combustion can be guided through the much longer channels of a masonry heater. This is probably both obvious and often overlooked. The door, especially metal doors, are a relatively new technology in the long history of fireplace building man(and woman)-kind. Perhaps one of the most significant contributions of the rocket stove is to accomplish this reduction of air into the combustion chamber without a door. It does this so successfully that you can even burn the fire upside down as we have experienced. The ideal amount of air is that which generally fits between the split burning wood. A brick is often used to close off excessive air if the firebox is not completely full of wood. This last element, for example, is critical and an example of the very important fine-tuning that is happening in a rocket mass heater burn.

At the same time, this is a very important design limitation since it prohibits sizing up the firebox without important repercussions. Those who were observing may have noticed us “barefoot builders” during wildacres 2009 really experimenting with this aspect. When we re-built the rocket mass heater inside that was eventually plastered with the lime we had made and painted with a naked lady (yes, that one!) we had built the front in such a way that we could make different fireboxes. If you remember, we tried putting a small glass door on the front of the down-draft firebox but found that even this slight modfication in widening the firebox to accomodate the glass door meant that the wood did not stay as organized as it needed to and, I think, allowed more air in than was necessary, especially when the firebox was not completely packed with wood.

As I have begun to experiment with making doors, I have come to appreciate doors a lot more and the care and cost involved in either casting or fabricating them. I have also come to think that in temperate to cold climates, firebox doors should really be thought of as a family heirloom and at the center of a family’s wealth – after all, there are times in history when money isn’t worth much more than paper for starting a fire which people in different parts of the world have experienced in inflationary situations like I experienced in Argentina and that I’m sure people in Russia have experienced. I don’t think that people consider the expense of either a vehicle, a computer (pillars of modern life) nor for kitchen appliances in a remodel in the same way they do masonry heater/cookstove hardware and the other related expenses. This may just have been my previous bias coming through to though I think it reflects the current moment and society’s related values.

One more thought before I get out into the cold to organize rock from a mountainside into some semblance of a beautiful heater skin. The issue of code. As I have begun to work building heaters in more code-respecting(/code-enslaved) situations, I have had opportunity to reflect on both its advantages and disadvantages. The only, main and significant advantage of code that I understand is that it ensures safety and formalizes that responsibility between the builder and the people living in the home, especially where this relationship is mostly otherwise anonymous. It also ensures a standard of quality to some degree by ensuring that things are done in a certain way and that certain materials are used.

On the flip side, I have come to understand that the whole issue of building codes and inspections has a lot to do with counties and other jurisdictions ensuring that what you build in your home not only serves you, but really more importantly, someone who you either might like to sell your house to or someone who would like to buy your house (hopefully under favorable conditions). While I can see the benefits of this, I get that uncomfortable feeling that in this situation, as with property taxes, it is really the county that owns your house and what you do with it… and I don’t think this is so conducive to really connecting with one’s home and where one lives.

There is also that element of stilting forward evolution.

These comments, especially the last ones, should be taken with a grain of salt. Most of this is to say, yes!, very exciting what you have written and propose Alex!

Max

Read More…..

• Buy the classic text on Rocket Mass Heaters by Ianto Evans & Leslie Jackson
• A Rocket Mass Heater from our Portfolio
• Towards Affordable Masonry Heater Construction….
• The Cabin Stove – A Small Masonry Heater at Aprovecho