Turtlerock Masonry Heat

Mobile Bake Oven Video

2011-12-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

We are very pleased to have a new video to post about our mobile bake ovens.

Please check the link below and see our You Tube channel.

Enjoy.

October/November Project Update

2011-11-28T12:24:00.001-08:00

It's been a busy fall. In addition to building masonry heaters in Benson, VT and another in Burlington, we have been working on a commercial oven in Shelburne, VT, shown here. This oven core is 5' x 5' interior, and meant to be multi-purpose. The restaurant/bakery owner has in mind a flexible operation that will bake bread, pizzas, and bagels.

There is a new brewery going in the same building, so the two enterprises aim to be solid bedfellows.

This was an oven size we had not built to date. The five by five square hearth with 19" vault at center feels very versatile and we will be excited to get some feedback from the owner down the road. Another new aspect to the project was the harness. Typically we have parts pre-fabricated and assemble the harness around the core on-site using nuts, bolts, and threaded rod. With this install we had our steel pre-cut and then used a mig welder on site to weld the components together. It went very smooth, and solved a few limitations of the old system. We are happy with the result and hope to be able to work this way in the future.

Big thanks to Jeremiah and Carsten for continually big efforts and long days.

Vibes: T-Rock Inspirations

2011-10-06T07:33:00.000-07:00

In these times nothing can seem more combustible than the Earth itself. Here's some music from the band Midnite. It both informs and inspires on a daily basis, helping each one to navigate the pathways at hand.

We feel that by building masonry heaters and wood fired bake ovens we help people and communities stay local with food production, heating needs, and resource use. By doing so we are able to support the unlocking of the future.

Della Fattoria Tribute: Guerlain and Church

2011-10-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Respect due to the masonic field marshals that made the Operation at Della Fattoria come together in grand style, Antoine Guerlain and Jeremiah Church.

These guys worked tirelessly and built two large ovens to perfection in short order.

The top photo shows the nimble fingers of Antoine, emerging from the ash drop, crawling up from the underworld beneath the hearth. True to the style and word of King Diamond.

The middle photo displays

Jeremiah holding ground in

Dog Town. This was an oven

he had built some years

previous on the coast,

near the town of Bolinas, CA.

At bottom we have Antoine in repose,

resting against the front face of one of the

oven cores, enjoying the night.

Thanks guys.

Progress: Operations at Della Fattoria

2011-09-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

Images arrived today from the current project. Very exciting to see the progress of these beautiful side by side 6' x 9' ovens! Here you see side walls and back walls complete and castable lintels in place. Sub hearth bricks are in, ready to receive the larger 2-1/2" thick 12" x 12" and 12" x 24" clipper tiles. Beautiful setting on the Webber Ranch.

Massive props to the masons on site:

-Church, Jeremiah

-Homstead, Carsten

-Guerlain, Antoine

I'm headed out tomorrow. Can't wait to get in on the action.

Della Fattoria: Petaluma, CA

2011-09-28T04:13:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to provide an update here on a current project. It's been exciting times. We have been in Petaluma, California since 9/8 building two new ovens for one of the long time foundational wood fired bakeries on the West Coast, Della Fattoria. This bakery is featured in the Alan Scott book, The Bread Builders. This is a high production bakery- 365 days per year, 1000 loaves per day.

We were contacted by Della Fattoria in just June of this year. Things went into motion right away as they had some concerns over the structural integrity of their existing wood fired brick ovens, and felt the need to plan around getting new ovens built rather than to have an "oven meltdown" one day and completely see their operation fall into chaos. We quickly went into design mode, re-amping the shape of our 6' x 9' hearth oven to allow for greater seismic resistance and enhanced harnessing. We planned for two side by side 6' x 9' hearth black ovens to fit to the original foundation built by Alan Scott. The attached image here is the drawing for the cores that we designed for the project- note the rugged harnessing including the steel angles in the four corners that will tie to strapping tied into the poured concrete foundation.

The project has been run on site by Antoine Guerlain, and with assistance from masons Jeremiah Church and Carsten Homstead. As of today, 9/28/11, they have progressed through the hearths, side walls, back walls, cast lintels and most of the vaulting. Things have come together very well and the support from the Webber family has been tremendous. We'll finish the cores, insulate the ovens, build up the steel stud and cement board walls, connect the chimneys and leave the oven facade to Yunker Webber, who is planning on building a stainless steel oven front.

Many thanks to Della Fattoria and the Webber family for this opportunity.

Dan's Brick Oven Bread

2011-09-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

Last spring we had the pleasure of building an oven for Dan Greenspan in southern New Hampshire. Dan had been a working professional bass player for some twenty years, but was a little burnt out and ready for something new. So he followed his passion for bread baking and has now completed an addition to his home to include a bakery space and oven (pictured). Dan bakes a flemish style bread called desem.

We were contacted by Dan mid winter 2011 and ready to build in mid spring. Antoine Guerlain completed most of the oven build, with Dan helping to get the foundation built and me eventually showing up for a few days. We choose a 4 x 6 interior hearth dimensioned oven, with 6-3/4 mass and plenty of insulation. We left the face of the oven set in rough 4" solid concrete block, ready to receive tile whenever Dan "gets around to it". Dan had picked up an amazing cast iron, forged steel, and brass riveted door at a second hand store some years previous- it had no pre-determined use at the time he bought it. We were able to make a frame for it and employ it as the ash box door for the oven. Also we used some additional space in the foundation for a "proofing room". Dan has been tweaking this little nook, but says it's service-able. That's on the lower left in the picture. The table slides in and out of the passage through the oven foundation.

It's been really nice to get to know Dan and his wife Mili (world class singer!) and be a witness to his excitement as he dials in his new operation. According to Dan, the new oven is "well behaved". I'll take that for positive feedback anyday!

Noah Elbers on Heat Exchangers

2011-05-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Antoine Guerlain and I finally got a chance to stop by and visit Noah Elbers at Orchard Hill Breadworks in Alsted, NH. We had been working in Richmond, NH building a 4' x 6' hearth commercial oven for a new bakery operation there run by Dan Greenspan.

Noah is a very knowledgeable baker and has been a huge supporter of our ovens over the last few years. He bakes in a massive LLopis oven, which is a manufacturer from Barcelona, Spain. Their ovens are famous for the round, rotating hearths. It was great to meet Noah and see a Llopis in action both for the first time.

I'd begun to contemplate using heat exchangers in the exhaust channels of bake ovens some time last fall, and then recently designed a system to do so in an oven I designed for Second Street Bistro in Livingston, MT. When I met Noah, I could see he was already way ahead of me!

In this video you'll hear Noah talking about his system. There is a lot of energy going "up the stacks" in most bake ovens, and the heat exchangers make for an increase to overall efficiency without a doubt. His 700 gallon tank was sitting at 180 degrees F, ready for use in the domestic system.

It was nice to watch Noah at work. Here he's in the middle of an 800 loaf bake night, cruising along, a few loaves at a time off the deck of the rotating LLopis hearth.

Bake Oven Door Set

2011-04-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

I've been very lacking on the blog posts of late- please forgive me if you are a follower! Lots going on, really, and I'll try to keep up a little better.

Yesterday we completed a door system for a bake oven in southern VT at Naga Bakehouse. The finished work is so beautiful that I couldn't help but to want to share it.

The door frames are 1-1/2" thick and insulated, with ceramic glass planes and air control sliders on the bottom of the frames.

Wish I got to keep them!

Vergennes Laundry Double Deck Oven

2010-09-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

This is the current project, underway since early August and nearing completion. This image shows the completed bake oven core for a double hearth 4' x 6' (internal hearth dimension) bake oven. The oven is designed so that each hearth may be fired independently- meaning either one at a time or both of them together. The gases from one oven do not channel through the other oven, but instead vent independently through a double channel system in the back of the oven and then into a central channel where all gases join and vent into a 10" round chimney pipe.

This design minimizes floor space while still allowing 48 sq ft of hearth area. Since the hearths can be worked independently, it will be possible to create differing baking environments in each hearth, allowing the baking of several products at the same time. For instance, pastries in the lower hearth and live pizza in the upper hearth to serve customers during lunch.

This oven is located in the old Vergennes Laundry. This was once a real laundromat, now turned bakery/cafe/expresso spot by Julianne Jones and Didier Murat. It will be a very nice spot! Be sure to drop by while cruising through.

Kneading Conference

2010-08-06T13:33:00.001-07:00

Last week Antoine Guerlain and I took a trip to the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, ME. Kneading brings together millers, grain growers, bakers, and oven builders- more or less the entire "food chain" related to artisan bread baking. In this pic I am sitting on top of a mobile oven I built and brought along. Richard Miscovitch used this oven for baking during his Production Baking workshop. It was great to see the new oven in action and feel the fun factor from pulling beautiful loaves of bread from an oven that can be pulled by a truck and taken anywhere you want to go.

Stacked Wood Fired Masonry Boiler and Heater

2010-05-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

Here's a snapshot of a completed design model for a client in Oregon. The objective was to design a system to heat a 3000 sq ft straw bale home using exclusively wood heat, and to direct a portion of that energy into a hydronic heated slab at the first floor level. The completed design includes a masonry heater on the second floor with heated benches, wood storage box, and bake oven and also a wood fired masonry boiler on the first floor. The poured concrete foundation walls for the masonry heater are used as the housing for a masonry wood fired boiler. The boiler resides at basement level, which also happens to be where the bedrooms for the home are. On the right side of the boiler a 3" SS heat exchanger connects to pipe which will carry the heated water into a mechanical room where the energy will be transferred into the hydronic tubes and then circulated into the slab.

The masonry heater will have an estimated output of 450,000 BTU daily. The wood fired masonry boiler will output 630,000 BTU daily. These output values are assuming two sixty pound burns daily through each system, or a total of about 240 lbs cordwood daily to heat the 3000 sq ft home at 15 degrees F. On normal heating days in Oregon the masonry heater and boiler will both be fired once.

The homeowner will build the stacked structure himself, and so the design project required detailed course by course layouts for both the boiler and masonry heater. Also included was a master materials list and suppliers for masonry, refractories, hardware, etc. The custom heat exchanger will be made locally at a fabrication shop. The model was completed in Sketch Up, which allows the homeowner to view the design in detail he has downloaded the program to his computer. Any details, sections, or plan views can be isolated from the model and printed for job site use. Or one can just put the laptop on the mortar board and take a look, which is what I typically do....so far so good...

Tidbits

2010-01-31T12:11:00.000-08:00

From top: brick diamonds from side of recent heater, blue Italian ram's head tile from my back yard oven, and bake oven arch and PBR from local heater project.

Bake Day Visit to Elmore Mtn Bread

2010-01-31T11:48:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture of the Elmore oven with a load of bread mid-bake. The oven is performing quite well, with terrific heat saturation and very even bakes. The loaves come out of the oven equally colored and with few deformities. The baking day starts with an evenly saturated oven with surface temps around 600 F. After 400 loaves and several hours of baking, the temperature at the surface will be about 540 F after a short period with no load in the oven. What this means is that a 600 loaf baking day is not out of the question. The baking capacity of the oven exceeds it's current use- which is a good problem to have. The bakery could choose to accept more accounts, or could keep their current production schedule and enjoy the 2 hour shorter bake day over their old oven, made possible by the bigger hearth and more efficient design.

New Heater: Reclaimed Clay Brick Shiner Finish

2009-11-26T06:44:00.000-08:00

This project was finished up last week in Fletcher, VT. The idea was to use locally sourced re-claimed antique bricks, and lay them on their skinny edge, or as "shiners", as opposed to "stretcher", which would be the typical style in which the broad surface is set horizontally. I had been messing around with this idea for a few months, and the client let me go for it. The other part of the idea was to lay the bricks with as little mortar as possible, and try to replicate with brick the "dry-lay" style of stonework that is very popular. The result is a fine line of chocolate tinted mortar between the bricks. These old bricks are fairly irregular, and so I let them feel like stone, and didn't obsess over level, etc. The result is a heater with a lot of feeling

and funk. The bricks speak for themselves, and in the textures of the broad faces are found fingerprints, leaf and stick imprints, and cat tracks, all remnants from the original molding process which was done by hand about 150 years ago when these bricks were made. There is a lot to see when you get up close, and some nice little surprises.

Large Double Bell Heater Core

2009-09-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

This is a large double bell heater core built in New Hampshire in early September. 550 bricks in the core. It will be finished in brick by a local mason.

Completed dimensions will be about 44" x 64". The home has R-30 walls and is about 2000 sq ft.

With any heating system, the home itself is responsible for about half the work. The heating device produces the BTU output, and the home has to hold it. In this instance, the home is well insulated, tight, and the heater is large and centrally located- the ideal combination. As a result, my initial feeling is that the homeowner will be able to get through most heating days on a single 60# firing. I'll check in sometime in February and see if that is the case.

Finished Photo

2009-09-29T06:42:00.001-07:00

This is the completed heater in Shelburne. It takes a while before all the loose ends on some projects are tidied up and the surrounding details are completed.

Clay plaster floor to ceiling on the heater body and large surrounding updraft channel mass. Red and blue glass tile detailing on floor level "kick board", around doors, and under black granite capping stone.

This is a fairly large heater and will have high output when in regular use. It will be interesting to see how even the surface temperature in the large updraft masses turn out to be, and to see what I'll be able to learn about gas flows are a result. The heater has been test fired and performed very well even on a hot day with all the windows and doors in the house wide open.

Current project- large contraflow with updraft channels

2009-07-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

This is the new heater just under construction as of this week. Drawing to the right is a Sketch-Up image showing the proposal for a large clay plaster finished heater. There will also be some decorative tile details on the finished project. The structure goes floor to ceiling in a 9 ft high room. It backs up to a wall which is the sidewall for the stairwell to the second floor. The central firebox/bake oven structure is the "guts" of a typical contraflow. The wide extensions to each side hold updraft channels. The gases will join in a smoke chamber above the main heater body and then enter a class a chimney pipe. The main heater body comes into the room 2'-8", while the extensions are just 16" wide. This design allows for a large but compressed heater footprint in the room, freeing up space for a dining table and movement space.

Oven Complete for Elmore Mtn Bread!

2009-07-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

A good project comes to an end. This entry is like an obituary of sorts, although it also marks a birth.

Only July 3rd I completed the oven. It was an in-depth project which either existed in my head or my hands for months. It was a little hard to let it go, but it was time, and the bricks were all laid up with no more to go....Andrew (bakery owner) came by while I was laying the last couple courses of brick. He asked if I'd like an expresso, which had become part of the afternoon routine on-site. And for once I turned him down as I was already too excited and working on calming myself down so my jittery fingers could lay the bricks. Instead I requested a beer, and was promptly handed a cold PBR, which went down smoothly to the backdrop of another rainy day. The next day I came up for a few hours of clean-up and was done. My son Liam came along that day and had fun playing with Andrew and Blair in the bakery.

So now the oven is very close being fired for the first time, as the owners of the bakery complete the insulation, chimney install, and oversee the fabrication of the doors. Then it will be slowly fired for a couple weeks and cured. At some point then the wall separating the oven from the existing bakery will come down, and the oven will enter into production mode. These final finishing details mark the last stages of the oven's birth, and it's entry into the baking routine. It will be really exciting to get the results of the project and collect some data on the performance of the oven.

When the wall comes down separating the oven from the existing bakery I will be able to get some final photos of the oven's face, which was built with antique bricks laid in lime mortar.

Bake Oven Progress

2009-06-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings all.....it's been a long while since my last entry. A great deal of energy has gone into the bake oven project for the Elmore Mtn Bakery.

After a solid 4 weeks of on-site building the main vaults are in place. The photo shown here is the oven hearth and side walls before the vault centering form and bricks were laid in. Every aspect of the project has been going very well. It's a big oven! The hearth is 6' wide and 9' deep.

Last week we had an excellent crew on site, with 3 masons from around New England coming to assist with the laying in of the 700 vault bricks.

A big thanks to Antoine Guerlain, Ksenia Chumakova, and Carsten Holmstead for the positive

energy. PBR's all around!

Now I'll be working alone again, and have the brick front face to complete along with the reducing arch, throat, and many finishing details. After that comes the final bake oven door design and oversight of the fabrication of those elements, which are the crucial final touches.

Stay tuned, it's a good project, I'll try to post more often. And please send me notes with any questions or to remind me to make more posts!

Commercial Wood Fired Oven

2009-04-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in the process of designing a large wood fired oven for a commercial bakery in Elmore, VT. This oven has a hearth sized at 6' x 9', and will produce 500+ loaves every other day. The oven is being designed to allow for the use of an automatic peel system, which improves greatly the efficiency of the baking process. This will require a custom set of loading doors spanning the entire width of the oven face. The oven build will be a significant undertaking and require up to 4 weeks working alone. I'm just hoping we can get it started before black fly season...

Brandon, VT Heater

2009-03-16T07:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of a heater completed last week in Brandon, VT. This project used reclaimed bricks, bluestone slabs, clay plaster and art tiles from a tile maker in Ohio. The heater hardware is from Pisla Oy. It was built during February and March by myself and Caitlin Jenness.

The home is an older farmhouse which has been gutted and fully updated.

Masonry Heater for Barack Obama?

2009-02-15T06:55:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe in another lifetime....but hey, he is proposing spending a lot of money to make the government buildings in Washington more energy efficient. So why not build a couple heaters in the White House? I'd like to put myself on the list of potential masons for the job.

This is a working drawing for an upcoming project, to be built with re-claimed bricks and bluestone slabs in a timber frame home.

Recent Site Visits

2009-01-31T08:18:00.000-08:00

I am currently working on an update to the Turtlerock Masonry Heat website (www.turtlerockheat.com). Part of this project includes re-visiting projects from the last few years and taking photos of the heater inside the finished home. Often times the heaters have been in use for at least one winter. It's a great opportunity to get feedback on heater performance and see what the strengths and weaknesses are for each particular design. I'm generally very happy with what I have seen in terms of heater performance, especially with heaters built inside modern, tight, well-insulated homes. In these cases owners are getting as much as 100% of the required heat output for the home. In older, less insulated, leakier homes heaters are still performing well but are sometimes not able to keep up with the heat loss, so on the coldest days supplemental systems are being used more often. Sometimes these results are more or less predictable in project planning, but every time a project is revisited the overall knowledge base regarding performance takes another jump forward.

Next Heater Project

2009-01-19T12:02:00.000-08:00

After years of completing all project plans with pencil and paper I have leaped into digital drafting. The next heater project, to begin in early February, has been entirely designed using the program "Sketch Up". One advantage is that the client can open and view the files once they have downloaded the free viewer. Revisions can be called for and completed with ease, allowing for a good digital exchange of ideas until the final draft is completed. Using Sketch Up it becomes much easier to draw the proposed heater into the existing home environment, allowing a greater recognition of the spacial relationships in living areas. The downside is that the drawings are colder, and the intention of the mason as an artist is lost. This can be compensated for with hand drawn images of key areas or concepts.

First Posting!

2009-01-15T04:48:00.000-08:00

Greetings to my new blog! It's a first....

Today might just be the coldest day of the winter so far, so it's a good day to begin blogging on masonry heat and start postings that will present current projects and concepts. I am currently taking a little time off from on-site projects, but am completing design work for heaters and bake ovens that will be built in 2009. Stay tuned!