Off Grid

One of the basic needs for any survival situation is a means of cooking food.

The most abundant fuel available is wood.  There are many ways to use wood to cook food… the most common being a camp fire or the “rocket stove”.  However, these methods are not the most fuel efficient, and a lot of heat is lost during cooking, resulting in excessive fuel consumption.

A more fuel efficient method is to build a wood fuel oven.  A wood fuel oven can be made out of a variety of materials…metal, brick, or cinder blocks are ideal, as long as you can make the oven air tight.

Understanding How Fire “Breathes”

Before building your oven, it’s important to understand the three aspects which regulate the burn rate and temperature of fire:

1. Available fuel
2. Escape rate of exhaust (smoke)
3. Available oxygen

Much like a car engine, the performance of your wood stove will vary based upon how well you regulate the above three components.

Smoke should be channeled away from your fire rapidly to prevent the fire from choking on its own exhaust. Restricting the flow of smoke out of the oven should never be used to regulate the fire.  Excessive smoke in your oven will make food taste bitter.  However, allowing smoke to escape too quickly will also allow heat to escape quicker, reducing the ability of your oven to retain heat and conserve fuel.

Most traditional non-electric cooking and heating appliances work by regulating the flow of fuel.  However, unless working with a pellet stove, it is rather difficult to regulate the “flow” of wood.

That leaves us with the only remaining aspect of fire, oxygen. This can be controlled by creating a damper which will restrict the flow of oxygen into the oven.

Gathering the Parts

You need the following components to build your oven:

• Oven Chamber
• Thermometer
• Fire Box/Grate
• Food Rack(s)
• Damper
• Exhaust Door/Lid
• Oven Door
• Depending on materials: assorted hardware, exhaust pipe

The Oven Chamber

As mentioned previously, the oven can be built out of many different materials.  Suggested materials include: Food grade 55 gallon drum, old charcoal kettle grill, brick and mortar, cinder blocks and mortar, or even a cardboard box lined with aluminum foil.

When all doors/dampers/etc are closed, the oven needs to be air tight, so that you can extinguish the fire when you are finished cooking without having to pour water over the fire.

Thermometer

A standard oven or grill thermometer.  One of the “dial” thermometers which have a metal probe and do not contain mercury.

Fire Box/Grate

The fire box/grate should be elevated so that ash from the burning wood can fall below the fire and prevent smothering the burning wood and preventing the flow of oxygen.

Food Cooking Rack

The food rack should also be elevated, and can be placed either above or next to the fire box.  A grill rack out of a propane grill works great for this.

Air Damper

The damper should be adjustable, but can be rather simplistic, such as a sliding piece of metal.  For optimal air flow the damper should allow oxygen to flow into the oven from beneath the fire, or on the opposite side of the oven from the exhaust and food rack.

The important thing is that the damper is adjustable, and makes the oven air tight when closed.  If need be, the damper can also double as an access door to the fire box.

Exhaust door/lid

The exhaust door/lid, much like the damper, can be simplistic, such as a sliding piece of metal.  Once again, the important thing is that the exhaust door/lid is adjustable, and makes the oven air tight when closed.

Oven door

The oven door should be large enough and located in a position to pull your food in and out with ease.  When closed, the door should make the oven air tight.

Miscellaneous hardware

It’s important not to forget all the hardware you’ll need to assemble your makeshift oven.  This includes screws, nuts, bolts, nails, etc.

How To Assemble Your Wood Stove

When assembling your wood stove, the location of all components is critical.  Your oven should encourage proper air flow by locating the air damper and exhaust door/lid on opposite sides of the oven, as pictured.  Your damper should always be as low as possible, and the exhaust should be at the highest part of the oven.  Remember, smoke (and heat) rises.

Try to design the oven so that while the entire oven is filled with heat, the smoke is quickly channeled around and away from the food.  Your fire should always be offset from your food.  This will not only prevent the food from becoming bitter with too much smoke flavor, it will also help prevent the food from burning.

Your thermometer should be level with your food, so that you can monitor the cooking temperature.

Finally, and I can’t reinforce this enough, make sure that when all doors/lids/vents/etc are closed, so the oven is as air tight as possible.

Using your Oven

The makeshift wood oven is very similar to the operation of a conventional oven…warm up the oven, put the food in, wait, pull the food out of the oven when done, and turn off the oven.

First, stack your wood inside the oven on the wood grate.  Generally, stacking the wood in a crisscross square is best for long burns.  Use a small starter log stick for easiest starting of the fire.  Starting off, you’ll want your air damper and exhaust wide open for maximum air flow when lighting the fire and warming up the oven.  If you find it takes a long time to warm up, you may want to try closing your exhaust partially to help retain heat.

Monitor your thermometer.  When the temperature is where you want it, close your air damper most of the way, only allowing a small amount of air into the oven.  Also partially close your exhaust to help retain heat.  While it takes a large amount of oxygen to get your oven warmed up, it won’t take very much at all to maintain your temperature.

Keeping your oven running will require constant supervision until you get the hang of it.  Every makeshift oven is different, and will require a lot of trial and error.  Put in your food, and keep an eye on the temperature.  If the temperature starts falling, open the air damper more, allowing additional oxygen to reach the fire, and close your exhaust slightly.  If the temperature keeps rising, close your air damper more.

Keep an eye on the edges of your oven door…if you see smoke starting to come out, open your exhaust more.  The idea is, keep the smoke flowing out of the oven, but keep as much of the heat in as possible.  Just like a regular oven, keep the oven door closed as much as possible, to keep the heat in.  A general rule I’ve found is that exhaust should be double the size of the air damper.

It helps to have a temperature probe handy, so you can check the internal temperature of your food.  Making sure your food has reached the minimum internal temperature is critical, otherwise your food may make you ill.

When you are finished with your oven, turn it “off” by closing all doors/vents/lids/etc.  Normally I will leave the oven in the closed state until I’m ready to use it again.

Caring for your Oven

When cleaning your oven, be sure not to use any harmful chemicals.  Generally, water and soap should be sufficient to clean your oven.  You may notice over time a black soot buildup inside your oven.  This is okay, as the soot will help to “season” the oven, and actually make your food taste better.

If you know you won’t be using your oven for a long time, it is advisable to completely wash and dry the oven after it has cooled, then store it in an airtight plastic bag to prevent dust or mold.  Always wash and dry the oven again after removing it from storage.

I hope that you have found this useful.  These oven plans have been adapted from the “Ugly Drum Smoker” and uses a similar cooking technique.  My custom built smoker uses this design, and can be used as a charcoal smoker or a wood oven.

This article was originally published back in July of 2011 on Modern Survival Online. 

There seems to be an interest in staying clean in an emergency situation.

That said, I have selected 3 YouTube videos for food for thought.  :-D

The first one is a Yuppie outdoor shower. Not for emergency situations unless you have a generator. But heck, there is preparedness and then everyday enjoyment!

Here is a Camp Shower, 1 gallon jug plus black plastic shower stall. This is survival or camping. Lots of good info.

Solar shower style that I eventually bought, used in an emergency situation in your own shower.  :)

I recently got a link to a lady who has been experimenting with a gutted toaster oven and tea lights. And I just had to try it in my toaster oven that I converted for rocket stove baking. Wow, it works! I did a little research and found there is a tea light oven out there called the Herc (puppy sells for right around $400, yikes!). I did not bother to gut my toaster oven, and I cut my hole in the bottom to sit on top of the rocket stove. The lady who was playing with her version had holes drilled in the back which did not allow it to heat up like mine does. So, here goes… The Herc has these fancy terra cotta bricks on the top. Well, we know you can bake on unglazed terra cotta and that it holds and radiates heat – I went down and bought a $1 unglazed terra cotta plant saucer and used some leftover heat resistant caulk to attach it to the inside top of my oven. I only have one place to slide in my grate, so I went to my “obtainium” pile and selected a piece of hardware cloth (Small mesh wire, I have no idea why they call it “cloth”.) cut it with a good scissors to the size of the bottom of my oven and then bent 4 to raise the grate. Then I placed the tea lights (Walmart brand is the best I have found at less than 5 cents apiece and go for about 4 hours) on the base of hardware cloth around the 4 sides so that I didn’t burn what I was baking. I also slid out the bottom tray that on mine I had drilled holes into – it worked with it, but some of the candles went out as they needed more air. It takes from 15 to 20 tea lights for my oven to bake a Rhubarb Crisp. I’m on a Rhubarb Crisp kick – rhubarb season – and have baked 3 now in this oven – I’M PLEASED! I did put in my oven thermometer. I had no problem getting from 300 to 400 degrees and even had to blow out lights to bring the temperature down! Reality is you don’t need more than 275 degrees to bake successfully – remember that heat rises so it is probably hotter than the thermometer is registering. Fewer candles used (Saving money.) and just a bit longer to cook. In other words, don’t sweat the numbers.  :-) Generally, you can use your tea lights 2 to 3 times for baking which means you have your cost down to 15-25 cents per use – Dare you to heat up your big oven for that! Your kitchen stays much cooler than if you do start your big oven too. This actually worked better than the Camp Heat, so I am adding to my stock of Walmart tea lights. And I am keeping this oven in the house as for summer it makes much more sense to use it than to start up my big oven for most of what I am baking for 2 people. Looking for other ideas on off-grid cooking? Check this post on 6 ways to cook when the power is out.

Since Bev has asked, I’ll add my own experiences with my Sun Oven…which I adore!  As I’ve mentioned (I’m sure) I love my Sun Oven. We were somewhat new at this type of thing so we just bought what we believed was the best and at the time we had the funds to do so.

So far we haven’t taken it camping because we don’t want to leave it unattended…someone might think it would be a good thing to put in their truck or the trunk of their car and you never know about racoons. I’ve also not cooked in it during the snow etc….yet, but have been assured by the manufacturer and others who have, that it cooks just fine although you may have to rotate it to keep it in the direction of the sun.

As for my experiences, I’ve just set it on top of a small table in the back yard, without any legs to tip it forward etc., and then let the sun do it’s thing. I haven’t had to rotate it or anything, just let the sun shine in :-)

I’ve only used my graniteware in my solar oven, but have got a couple of small bread loaf pans that are very dark colored and I plan to try them out for bread. I use several different sized roasters with lids, and since I use graniteware in our RV I have several pie tins, plates, cups and a coffee pot. Everything will fit into my solar oven except my coffee pot, but that’s okay…it’ll cook quicker on the outside grill :-)

The picture at the top is of a raw pork roast that I put into my solar oven along with vegetables etc. that took about 4 hours to cook thoroughly and was absolutely fork tender & so moist you wouldn’t believe it, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have burned if I’d left it all day. The only thing I’ve learned is that I DO NOT have to add water. So on this particular occasion, I just took the juice that it created and made gravy out of it.

Because of my solar oven, our Coleman 2-burner cook stove with an oven that fits on top, and lots of propane, and a single burner butane stove (like they use in chinese restaurants etc.) I’ve been slow in approaching other sources of cooking. We do plan to purchase a StoveTec-type stove though because we believe it would be safe to use inside with gel candles, t-lights, votive candles etc. It’s also easy enough to move outside to burn wood or charcoal, perhaps even some wood chips.

Either way we look at it, solar is about the cheapest source of cooking and supplementing your heat there is. Right now, we’re not too interested in providing electricity via solar. The Roost is small enough and not situated in the right direction, for us to install panels on it’s roof…and in a SHTF situation would be a signal that we have some sort of power, as well as if we set up panels outside they’d probably get stolen or deliberately damaged. Same for our solar oven, don’t want to set it out even at the Roost where it could be stolen.

As a ps…we also own one of the “oil less” cookers (electric) that’s also another great addition to your cooking alternatives and can also dehydrate…as long as you have electricity of some sort. What’s that old saying?  “try it you’ll like it.”

p.s. if you like the idea of cooking with the sun, but are on a “DIY” budget, check out this awesome DIY solar cooker. 

After doing the Off-Grid series with the masonry heater this just caught my eye! An inexpensive owner-built masonry heater that uses sticks like a rocket stove! “Rocket mass heaters” in a nutshell:

• heat your home with 80% to 90% less wood
• exhaust is nearly pure steam and CO2 (a little smoke at the beginning)
• the heat from one fire can last for days
• you can build one in a day and half
• folks have built them spending less than $20

The verbose details on rocket mass heaters: This could be the cleanest and most sustainable way to heat a conventional home. Some people have reported that they heat their home with nothing more than the dead branches that fall off the trees in their yard. And they burn so clean, that a lot of sneaky people are using them illegally, in cities, without detection. When somebody first told me about rocket mass heaters, none of it made sense. The fire burns sideways? No smoke? If a conventional wood stove is 75% efficient, doesn’t that mean the most wood you could possibly save is something like 25%? How do you have a big hole right over the fire and not have the house fill with smoke? I was skeptical. And then I saw one in action. The fire really does burn sideways. The exhaust is near room temperature – and very clean. The smoke doesn’t come back up because a huge amount of air is getting sucked into the wood hole. Neat! I sat on one that had not had a fire in it for 24 hours – it was still hot!”

WOW! Have a pop or a beer and heat too?!

Yes, you CAN have it all! LOL  :-D

And More!

 

And More!!!

And YES MORE!!!

 

Inspired? I am too!

Coming soon, Bev’s version of a passive solar Pepsi can heater…