Mixed Fuel Range (Stove)

[billten]

I obviously have too much time on my hands :-) because i have been thinking a lot about the cost of propane (it just went past P1,000 a tank and is almost up to P1,100 already here in Cebu). Anyhow, to make a long story short i chatted to my 80 year old mother, who incidentally has been using, for the last 40 years, an oven that uses wood, charcoal or coal as a fuel. The brand she uses (she has had the same stove in all this time and it wasn't new when she got it!) is an AGA.http://www.agaliving...ga-cookers.aspxIt cooks amazing and is very economical, so what i was wondering was... has any of our members seen this kind of multi-fuel stove available here?Also, anyone with any clever ideas on how to build one (with plans preferably ;-) ) would be VERY welcome.BTW, just to head things off, i am not talking about the traditional clay pizza over, this is an everyday stove that has burners and such.

[Art2ro]

Pretty expensive AGA stoves/ovens! The most inexpensive way is the Pinoy way with a dirty kitchen out back with 4 hollow blocks with a steel grill top on the ground and just use local charcoal or wood if you can find free wood laying around, because wood ain't cheap anymore! Here's a picture of our electric and LPG stove top and oven and it wasn't cheap at P42,000.

Edited March 4, 2012 by Art2ro

[Dave Hounddriver]

In my 20's I lived 'off grid' and used a wood stove for cooking. It seems to me it took a long time to cook anything and it doubled as a source of heat in northern Canada. They are still available, new or used, in northern Canada if you wanted to look into importing one.

[i am bob]

AGA stoves were and are still popular in the Canadian Maritime provinces as well. In Nova Scotia, I would see AGAs that were 50 or 60 years old that looked brand new. I think the oldest porcelain front one I was was from around 1900 and was still in perfect shape! The only thing that ever goes wrong with them (if you look after them) is the firebox might burn out but there is an epoxy available that will add a new surface and keep it going for many years more! Most people are using wood in theirs but others will sometimes burn something else... If it makes a good cook fire, you can use it.Only issue I see is what was mentioned above... They are also used to give off heat! And I don't think a central kitchen heater is really called for in the Philippines... So the dirty kitchen is the best place for it... And in that case, is the expense worth it? Once you try something baked in the oven of a woodstove, you just might say yes!

[Curley]

Aga and Rayburn stoves are great in a cold country but you need to keep them going all the time if you want to use the top burners unless you have an oil fired one. My future brother in law has designed and makes 2 burner cookers like the common lpg ones here but his work with charcoal and electric fans, very quick, controllable and extremely cheap to run. At the moment he can sell all he can make but I am looking at helping him to go into mass production.We are also looking at models with more burners but at the moment we are unsure of the need, most homes here seem to cope well with one or two burners

Edited March 4, 2012 by Curley

[billten]

Well, what i need one for is to bake my bread. I bake a batch of bread every week or so and it eats through about a quarter of a tank of gas. The huge clay oven's are lovely but way too inefficient for me so it looks like i may have to figure out how to build a rocket bread oven.http://youtu.be/z-g3jwv3R8Q