Making an oven from your dump load

[Murlin]

I read one time where DanB cooked some pizza with his resistors.

I plan on building a small wood oven on my back patio.

I had a thought of incorporating the heating coils I will be using for a dump load  in the oven somehow.

That way your dump would be safely inside a fire proof structure since it would be on all the time.  

Not sure how many watts you would be generating in a good size dump load but most toaster ovens are rated at 1600 watts.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Murlin

[Slingshot]

I'm sure it could be done, but it seems not to be a very efficient manner of utilizing your waste energy.  Your oven will be heating on it's own schedule, regardless of whether you feel like cooking/eating anything.

Why not let the excess energy operate an element in a hot-water heater for your home?  Or, assuming you live somewhere that usually needs home heat, let it heat the interior of your house?

[asheets]

I'm playing with an idea for taking the extra power, and sending it to some heating elements inside a woodgas generator...  Don't know how this is going to take shape yet, though...

[Murlin]

Ya you could heat water with the dump...

The sun does that for me in summer, and in winter there is enough wasted energy going up the chimney to do the water heating then.

In the winter I am planing on dumping to a heater for my shop.

It is in the summer where I was thinking of directing the excess.  When a lot of heat is not wanted.

It only takes a little while to whip out a few loaves of bread to put in your Homwbrew freezer....you just bake when your oven is hot.

A link to one hommade freezer...

http://www.thesustainablevillage.com/servlet/display/microenterprise/display/14

Murlin teh hijacking his own thread.   lol

[alancorey]

Aw, shucks, I thought the "wood" was the clue in "building a small wood oven".

Thought maybe you were kiln-drying lumber, at least small pieces for furniture or something.  That could pretty much go on its own timetable.

If I ever get to that point I'm planning to use an electric heater in my wood shed as a dump load in the summer, so the heat can go into drying firewood.  Stack wood on palettes, put heating elements under the palettes.

  Alan

[BT Humble]

Aw, shucks, I thought the "wood" was the clue in "building a small wood oven".

Thought maybe you were kiln-drying lumber, at least small pieces for furniture or something.  That could pretty much go on its own timetable.

If I ever get to that point I'm planning to use an electric heater in my wood shed as a dump load in the summer, so the heat can go into drying firewood.  Stack wood on palettes, put heating elements under the palettes.

Wooden[1] it be funky if he powered the wood oven with a scaled-up WoodAx turbine? ;-)

BTH

[1] Sorry about that, puns being the lowest form of wit and all.

[Murlin]

I had considered putting the dump load somehow in areas between the firebox and the the outer shell.

I know there are materials out there that will absorb a ton of heat and retain it.

If you could dump to the firebox somehow, perhaps the dump could keep your firebox hot longer or even make it so you can decrease the amount of wood needed to bring the oven up to temp.

The oven in question is a round domed earth oven.

Coils themselves wouldnt hold much heat as all the heat made would be radiant heat.

The Idea would be to capture the heat generated by the dump and direct it, to be absorbed by the firebox.