La Plancha wood cooking stove info

       What follows is just cut and paste stuff from emails I have sent and received. Hopefully, it might help you, too.

            The intent is to install a Mexican style cooking wood stove in the main house room I live in, and to get some heat out of it, too.

Only 50 came to the USA, and Putnam County where the Hemlocks is qualified.

Today was part one, and the jury rig idea came through.

Bottom line, the exhaust gas has to go outside for human health reasons, like CO1 and smoke.

And I have chosen to have all this happen through a Pella window (top side).

Well I chose to use a mineral board with steel cladding go penetrate the upper window. Now the penetration happens only after the stove pipe arrives from Washington State, which should happen in the next day or so.

It never fails. I was using a battery powered circular saw, and the battery went out. And the back up battery was dead.

So I went back to manual, like a widget to cut the steel, and even used a hack saw when that made sense, and a hammer to bang in the metal.

Thank goodness I had another fall back. In this case it was chemical, like using the stuff to fill the cracks. And it worked. 

            Bottom line, it (La Pancha) is designed for cooking as a first priority with heat as a second priority. And it has a griddle on top which works pretty well. The exhaust goes outside through an exhaust pipe that is custom fitted. The extra parts from Washington State I had to modify some to fit the pipes that came with the stove.

            Right now I keep a 38 cup coffee boiler on the griddle to use as a humidifier. 

            Further, it is designed to use wood one can pick up in the yard. Though it does take wood, or charcoal, or coal; they all need to be replaced more often than a traditional wood burning stove designed for heat as a first priority. The Hemlocks has a metal trash can to store wood in.           

            Now the Hemlocks has one more similar high tech stove (Zoom Versa) which is intended to use next door to heat the hothouse there. Plants do just fine with the CO1 gas from it, as well as from the heat from it.           

            Last learning how to regulate cooking and warming heat is a skill kind of like getting married, like learning one’s spouse. And that usually takes time, and so it is for this stove, too. There’s four different doors to learn how to set, and I give myself a couple of months to figure that out, too. So far, I am doing OK.

 

            Clay, you need to become a product tester and get paid to do it.

      Good suggestion.

            Now I am a beta tester of sort for the marketers. 

            Right now I just want to figure it out, like a high school chemistry experiment. Or even getting married. 

            Now I expect failures, too. 

            Even today, I switched from coconut husk charcoal to the more traditional hardwood charcoal, and that even started differently. So another lesson was learned. 

            So far it looks like it will cut my cold season public electric bill by 50% to 75%, but again I am in the testing/learning stage. Remember I also make my own electricity, too. 

            In a few days I am moving to the yard wood stage, which is free to me, and will see what happens. I expect surprises, kind of like normal. 

            Last, what goes around comes around, I guess.  

            Back when my great-grandfather bought and built the place, and he was a Nashville city boy, he once suggested to the caretaker, Mr. Swallows, that he help his wife, who scurried around the yard collecting wood for the wood cooking stove. His suggestion was along the line of building up the wood supply like to the “rick” level. Well he said something like “oh Mr. Williams, I wouldn’t trust no woman with that much wood”. So now I am doing Mrs. Swallows work, and would probably be thought of similarly by 1910 standards.