[HesterF]

We've got a slightly odd arrangement with what appears to be an old brick bread oven that has its opening from our hall. Back to back with that is a fireplace in the kitchen. We'd looked at putting a range into the kitchen fireplace but it's too narrow for the pellet range we wanted and we can't widen it so we're now looking at putting a wood burning stove in there instead (mostly wanted it for heat - oil bills so high). But then we were wondering whether we could re-establish the bread oven just using the heat from the wood burner to heat it (rather than the traditional method of lighting the fire inside the bread oven and then clearing it out before use - messy in my hall way). Can anybody suggest how this might be done? Our only logic was that some of the woodburners have huge heat outputs - used with back boilers to heat water or radiators - so if we can somehow direct it to the oven instead, it should be hot enough to cook lovely pizza!

[spandit]

If you could run the flue under the floor of the bread oven it might give you what you want but doubt it'll conform to building regs and I'd be dubious of the draw you'd get.

That said, my wood burning range cooker (in the process of making) has a simple flue damper that lets all the hot gas straight up the chimney. Once a good draw is established, the damper can be closed and the hot gases have no option but to circulate around the ovens - essentially what you're proposing.

It's a lot of pipework, though, but doable, I'd say

[cloddopper]

HesterF,
 Have you actually looked at some of the pelleted burners. I was given a glance at a few pages of them  a while back .. they were suggesting that emptying was a very clean once weekly job done by pulling out a lidded drawer .

 Some were quite small units as well.
To me the only drawback for us was no space in the dry to store each delivery of four dumpy bags of pelleted wood .

 Anyway that's bye the bye.
Can you put up pictures of both sides of the opening ?
I have  an idea from related to when I used to work in an old traditional Italian pizza house back in the early 1980's
( don't expect a reply for a few days .. Munchkin is on half term hols  )

[HesterF]

HI,

Yeah, when I said wood burner, I should have said pellet burner. I love the whole concept of pellets and the ability to automatically feed, control temperature etc. We were very keen to get an AGA style range but pellet fed. But that was the one we couldn't fit - the opening is about 15cm too narrow and the structural engineer has basically said to not even thing about trying to alter the fireplace pillars because it's already surprising that the 9m of chimney and two floors above are happily supported on one cross beam and the fireplace lintel.

We found an Italian range that would fit but it had minimal cooking capacity and was just as expensive as the bigger version so then I just reckoned it would be better to get a decent pellet stove as opposed to faffing around with the cooking options too.

I'll try and get some photos up in the next couple of days. My minions go back to school tomorrow and there's currently a den in front of the brick oven which I will need to clear up first!

H