Hi - I live in a housing co-op in Toronto, Canada and we have a barrel oven built about 12 years ago. I’ve just started using it and I was hoping folks here might be able to answer some questions I have.
I’ve used it twice in the last 2 months, and each time I can get a fire going quiet well, but the it takes a lot of wood to get it even close to 350 and then it cools down very quickly. My understanding of the oven is that it shouldn’t take much wood to get it going and the heat should last quite awhile.
Any thoughts on what may be going on? I’ve uploaded some photos of the oven.
Barrel ovens typically have some amount of sand added to them inside the barrel to help moderate temperature fluctuations. Is this the case? Too much mass inside the barrel would slow down heat up times but would likely increase heat retention.
Another cause of less than ideal function would be if the air space between the metal barrel and the barrel/masonry vault is too big. We recommended a maximum of 2" and ideally closer to 1" for good heat exchange. Are you able to look at this by opening up the door and shining a light up towards the side of the barrel?
A final thought would be to try to slow down the draft since you have a relatively tall insulated chimney. You could do this by installing a damper, something like this, in the chimney to slow down the draft and promote more heat exchange.
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