Cooking The Christmas Ham In Our Kitchen Wood Stove/Oven.

[S&S_BRH]

Hello Hearthmates.

I have lurked for about a year. finally signed up and joined today. I'll try to do a brief introduction.

Wife and I bought many acres, about 20 miles outside of the nearest city, in 2022. my wife custom designed the Floorplan to our "dream house" then had it converted into actual blueprints. house was completed, and we moved in mid 2023.

we are homesteaders. we (try to) raise most of our food ourselves. we are avid gardeners and keep several types of livestock. we live a partially off-grid life, working towards total off-grid as we tame the new homestead.

we designed our home with 3 wood stoves. one in the Great Room, one in the master bedroom, and one in the kitchen.

our kitchen wood stove is a fully functional, built-in wood oven & cooktop.



It just recently got cold enough to justify firing the wood oven. there is, obviously, a steep learning curve.

tomorrow, I am going to cook the Christmas ham in the wood oven. my parents and sister will be coming over, and they will bring most, if not all of the sides. tonight, I will be splitting and custom-to-size cutting some oak and mesquite to fire it with.

I only hope for everything to go well. no backdraft smoking out the house, nothing melting or burning, and no temperature issues.

I will try to update this thread with some relevant photos, as I do my best to host our first Christmas in the new home.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Good luck! I hope the oven cooks like a dream!

 

[begreen]

Looks very nice. What cookstove is this? LaCunza? How do they safely get around the typical 10" clearance requirement for these built-in installations?

Start the stove well in advance to allow the oven to warm up and equalize at the desired temperature after the bypass is closed. Then just feed the fire a few sticks to maintain the oven temp.

 

[Eman85]

Baking something like a ham will be a good place to start, not as sensitive as baking a cake. Wood cookstoves are a science experiment and will require knowledge of many wood types and how to use them. Also requires labor intensive wood. Those that cooked with wood many times had a circular saw on their tractor for cutting stovewood.

 

[S&S_BRH]

Looks very nice. What cookstove is this? LaCunza? How do they safely get around the typical 10" clearance requirement for these built-in installations?

Start the stove well in advance to allow the oven to warm up and equalize at the desired temperature after the bypass is closed. Then just feed the fire a few sticks to maintain the oven temp.

yes, Lacunza.

I'm not sure they "safely" get around the requirements, but we have already fired it many times, with no issues. we keep several Govee WiFi temp probes in "high risk" areas near the oven, and we just generally keep a close watch on it. as of yet, we have not seen any worrying temperatures in the cabinets.

it's 80% masonry. what you see is what we bought. everything you don't see is what actually makes the stove, firebox and ash pan. it is entirely built with fire brick.

there is no bypass. I wish it had one, but it just wasn't part of the package. from the moment you fire it, the heat and exhaust travels over the oven box, down the right side, under the oven box, and out the back bottom, into and up the chimney.

Baking something like a ham will be a good place to start, not as sensitive as baking a cake. Wood cookstoves are a science experiment and will require knowledge of many wood types and how to use them. Also requires labor intensive wood. Those that cooked with wood many times had a circular saw on their tractor for cutting stovewood.

we have already cooked our Thanksgiving turkey in it, and a few other items. it will be *YEARS* before we have a solid confidence in our abilities with this oven, but we will be learning and improving all along the way.

the firebox is small, but it has worked well, so far.

and yes, we also keep a circular saw in our "prep room" for cutting various custom woods for each of our 3 different stove requirements.

currently we mostly burn mesquite and oak, but we are piling up lots of elm and some mulberry. we also ran into a bit of peach and two mimosa (silk) trees.

 

[begreen]

What other stoves is the house heated with?

The closeness of wood near the firebox makes me nervous. I'd regularly pull out the top drawer next to the stove's firebox and check temperature on the common side with the stove after hours of burning. Masonry conducts heat pretty well until it is pretty thick.

 

[S&S_BRH]

What other stoves is the house heated with?

The closeness of wood near the firebox makes me nervous. I'd regularly pull out the top drawer next to the stove's firebox and check temperature on the common side with the stove after hours of burning. Masonry conducts heat pretty well until it is pretty thick.

we have a morsø 1410 in the bedroom and a U.S. Stove Defender in the Great Room. both are new, so EPA 2020.

We have two Govee WIFI phone connected thermometers on when we use it. one sits on the counter at where it meets the wall. the other we wedge between the top drawer (where slider/roller is) and the inside of the cabinet where it meets the masonry of the Lacuza.

behind the iron facade of the oven, it is built out of 5" thick fire bricks. I also slid an additional 1/4" thick Hardie board between the bricks and the wood cabinets, right behind the decorative black bricks you see left and right of the oven.

I work in construction and maintenance, so I was intricately involved with the construction of our home. the GC we hired to supervise the project (so I could focus on work and make $$) had never done anything like this. he knew nothing about how to do it. his masons had never seen anything like it either. the masons and I did most of the thinking, planning and execution. GC just kind of looked on in disinterested confusion.

I also designed and customized the chimney & flue and damper. it runs inside an interior wall, our bedroom wall. originally the damper was supposed to be a big 10"×7" iron plate, frame and guillotine baffle. this would have ruined the look of the tile. it was meant to be masoned into a square brick chimney, but we used modern, double wall, duravent pipe. if you look closely, you can see the custom-made baffle lever hiding in the decorative tile pattern.

 

[EbS-P]

It’s a fire inside your new home and you didn’t follow clearance to combustibles for the install. (And you have a stove in the bedroom which is against code). It just makes pause. Do you consult with a chimney professional for the planning?

 

[River]

there is no bypass. ... from the moment you fire it, the heat and exhaust travels over the oven box, down the right side, under the oven box, and out the back bottom, into and up the chimney.

That is astonishing. I would have said (emphatically) such an arrangement could not work. Why don't you have smoke pouring out of every opening (air intakes, lids, open firebox door, etc.) when you light this stove?

 

[akgal]

Beautiful stove! I’m gearing up for a prime rib in ours on Christmas day. Currently starting cookie baking. I am behind in life this year. 🙃

 

[S&S_BRH]

It’s a fire inside your new home and you didn’t follow clearance to combustibles for the install. (And you have a stove in the bedroom which is against code). It just makes pause. Do you consult with a chimney professional for the planning?

what codes? where we are, there aren't any. unrestricted land, with zero requirements. I could live in a straw hut with no running water, no sewage and no ventilation. we did extensive research before purchase.

we live a bit differently from most folks. we don't live dangerously or carelessly, however, there was a time, not too many decades ago, when air quality and clearances weren't dictated by bureaucrats, but rather by common sense and observation. we take the benefits of both worlds. we built using common sense, logic and history but take advantage of the added benefits of CO Moniters, WIFI, thermometers, charts, data and live-time tracking.

an HVAC professional helped us design our home climate systems. we consulted, remote, (via "hover") with a fireplace/chimney expert as well. they saw no issues. worst they could come up with was a possible need to Crack a window if we had all 3 raging at once, but even that was more about comfort than safety

That is astonishing. I would have said (emphatically) such an arrangement could not work. Why don't you have smoke pouring out of every opening (air intakes, lids, open firebox door, etc.) when you light this stove?

while I won't say we have never had an issue... we generally don't. it's mostly about wind direction. even if we have the occasional backdraft smoke out, it's usually solved by opening a specific window 1" - 2" on one side or another of the house until the fire is well established. 9 times out of 10 this is not a problem. the only time it occurs is on a cold start with a STRONG wind out of the WSW. even then, once we have a good heat and fire, the issue resolves and we can close any window that might have been open.

the best scenario is a 24/7 fire from nov-mar. anytime we have had an established fire, there was no effect from wind or temperature changes.

 

[peakbagger]

If you live in the lower 48 almost every state has building codes that are in effect. https://www.iccsafe.org/wp-content/uploads/Code_Adoption_Maps.pdf Generally, where the disconnect is enforcement. In many rural areas, there is no enforcement, does that mean that the code is not in effect, nope. For most, its a non issue although in some areas, some insurance companies and banks may elect not to do business. When it becomes an issue is if there ever is insurance claim. Odds are if its small one, not a problem, but if its big one an insurance firm can deny the claim if the loss is directly related a non code installation. Some folks dont have or need insurance and go into it with eyes wide open and more power to them. It is the folks, down the road that may be the second owner of the house that gets the surprise.

 

[Megunticook]

If you live in the lower 48 almost every state has building codes that are in effect. https://www.iccsafe.org/wp-content/uploads/Code_Adoption_Maps.pdf Generally, where the disconnect is enforcement. In many rural areas, there is no enforcement, does that mean that the code is not in effect, nope. For most, its a non issue although in some areas, some insurance companies and banks may elect not to do business. When it becomes an issue is if there ever is insurance claifighterm. Odds are if its small one, not a problem, but if its big one an insurance firm can deny the claim if the loss is directly related a non code installation. Some folks dont have or need insurance and go into it with eyes wide open and more power to them. It is the folks, down the road that may be the second owner ofthe the house that gets the surprise.

As a former firefighter that cookstove makes me nervous. Having combustible materials that close just goes against all my instincts and experience. I've seen first hand what can happen.

I admire the spirit of independence and self-sufficiency. My wife and similarly bought land and designed/built a house, grow a lot of our food, installed solar and batteries, etc. Good luck on your new life!

Hope your ham turns out well. We don't own a cookstove but I've baked in one many times. Smaller pieces of wood is key I found. And don't stress if you can't dial in the exact temp.

Merry Christmas.

 

[xman23]

That stove / fire box is against cabinets and the wall. Is that what the manufacturer clearances say is allowed? It's not something I would not ignore.

 

[S&S_BRH]

That stove / fire box is against cabinets and the wall. Is that what the manufacturer clearances say is allowed? It's not something I would not ignore.

it was installed exactly as instructed, via the included manufacturer installation literature. being a stove from another country, perhaps their standards are different from ours. we have used it multiple times. the highest temperature we have recorded, beside the firebox, at the cabinets is 180°. this was during Thanksgiving turkey. I had been firing it quite hot for 2.5 hours. on another occasion, we had it fired for 3 days straight, at a lower, more moderate temperature. no issues.

in addition to standard smoke/CO detectors, we also have a second set of 4 wifi smoke/CO detectors in our home, one about 6 feet away from the fire box. there are two Govee wifi thermometers at the firebox. on on the granite counter top, one inside the cabinet at the top drawer, direcltly next to the firebox. there are two automatic chemical powder fire suppressant systems installed above the stove, one on each side of the cabinet/vent hood above it. we have 4 manual fire extinguishers in the kitchen.

safety, observation and caution are just part of the use of it. it is certainly NOT your Whirlpool IR glass top electric stove.

when we use it, we monitor it closely. we have thermometers everywhere. as mentioned above, two of them are wifi alarm type, connected to my wife's iPhone. we are still learning about it, and collecting data. we are careful... but above all else, we had it installed by professionals, following the manufacturer specifications.

 

[Sealcove]

it was installed exactly as instructed, via the included manufacturer installation literature. being a stove from another country, perhaps their standards are different from ours. we have used it multiple times. the highest temperature we have recorded, beside the firebox, at the cabinets is 180°. this was during Thanksgiving turkey. I had been firing it quite hot for 2.5 hours. on another occasion, we had it fired for 3 days straight, at a lower, more moderate temperature. no issues.

in addition to standard smoke/CO detectors, we also have a second set of 4 wifi smoke/CO detectors in our home, one about 6 feet away from the fire box. there are two Govee wifi thermometers at the firebox. on on the granite counter top, one inside the cabinet at the top drawer, direcltly next to the firebox. there are two automatic chemical powder fire suppressant systems installed above the stove, one on each side of the cabinet/vent hood above it. we have 4 manual fire extinguishers in the kitchen.

safety, observation and caution are just part of the use of it. it is certainly NOT your Whirlpool IR glass top electric stove.

when we use it, we monitor it closely. we have thermometers everywhere. as mentioned above, two of them are wifi alarm type, connected to my wife's iPhone. we are still learning about it, and collecting data. we are careful... but above all else, we had it installed by professionals, following the manufacturer specifications.

Just out of interest in this kind of stove I was looking through the manual for the model 7T as an example. That particular model shows 400mm or 15.75” side clearances. That said, some of their own images show flush installations, but it looks like there is an added insulation section between the stove and the cabinets. What model Lacunza is this?

Edit: perhaps this is a Clasica model? Those show 200mm or just under 8” side clearances, but again they show flush installed stoves on their site. Did not read further to find out what they are placing between the stove and cabinets to reduce the clearance.

Clearance questions aside. Cool looking modern cook stove. Would be interested to hear how it performs and can I ask how expensive these are?

 

[Max W]

Congrats on your new home and homestead! We lived off grid for a time and know how central and important a cookstove is. Yours is a beauty. I think that small firebox should allow you to cook in warmer weather with less or no overheating the house. As far as safety it sounds like you take it seriously. I do hope you haven’t overlooked the possibility of pyrolysis, something I have learned about this year. That 180 deg reading caught my attention. Apparently temperatures as low as 200 deg f over time can drastically change the structure and reduce the combustion temperature of wood. One experiment produced an ignition point at 228 deg f and I’m pretty sure it can be lower. I think there is a write up pyrolysis this somewhere on this site. Still a ways to spring but seed catalogs will will be showing up soon. Best wishes going forward.

 

[begreen]

Correct. Pyrolysis is not instant combustion. It is the effect of lowering the ignition temp of the combustible by exposure to heat. Sometimes, this takes years. There is evidence that hot water heating pipes can cause pyrolysis over time if they are not isolated from the surrounding wood. That's with 185-200º water.

Whats the hottest temp you have measured your wall at?

I've found that most manufacturers quote 117 degrees (F) above the ambient temperature for clearance testing. I've always been told that 185 + degrees is the tipping into the danger zone... I've heard this same thing, most recently from Jotul (last week); that 117 degrees (F) above ambient is...

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