Four years ago me and my girlfriend bougth this real cheap old farmhouse and in february we began to rebuild it. Now we have been working for nearly half a year and I would like to show you a part of the project: the Finish mass-oven. These ovens are great because they accumulate heat in the 3 tons of massive brick walls. They use the wood extremely effectively if used correct and there is an opening for baking bread, pizza or boiling water. We also needed a stairway to the newly build second floor, so the idea was to combine the oven with the stairway.
This is how we started. We removed ALL inner walls in the house and the machines dug 60 cm down. Some places the outer walls needed to be supported from below, since the house is build old-style directly on the ground.
Here the core of the oven is beeing build.
The core has been build in the second layer of bricks. There is a channel for smoke between. You can see the beginning of the stairway.
Here comes the next layer of bricks and the doors have been installed.
Now it begins to look like the drawings we did in the winter.
The stairway seen from second floor and the top of the oven.
Finito! After this photo was taken it has been painted white and it can sit for hours just looking at it and smile. In a couple of weeks it has dried and we can start using it.
Here you can see some technical drawings that shows the principles of the finish oven:
The oven needs finecut pieces of light wood about 40 cm long. It can heat the entire house with 15 kg. pr day. The wood needs to have a humidity below 10 pct. to get the desired effect. It is done by drying the wood outside for two years, then store it inside next to the oven for 14 days, and then store it in the oven after last fire for 22 hours.
This make it possible to get all gasses burned and have a effect of about 80 pct. Normally 40 -50 pct. is good.
When drying the wood inside the oven after the last fire one has to be extremely carefull. If the wood by mistake starts to burn with no oxygen, it will explode when opening the door. This has harmed people and destroyed many similar ovens.
We hired a specilaist to build the oven but we helped him all we could.
