Paul,Sunny Boy wrote: ↑Thu. Jan. 30, 2020 10:49 amThanks Reid. More unique about the design.
Agreed. By "storing" the heat with a lot of the stove's exterior well insulated it's not releasing it as well into the room. So then, most likely it sends quite a bit up the chimney ? Good for cooking baking without working the firebed as hard, but not as good for heating the house.
When I made the back heat shield box for my range, the intension was to be able to safely move the range closer to the wall, plus not send heat to an outside wall. With many ranges, the back of the oven is the only single wall. There is no double thickness like the door and a heat source surrounding it with the firebox and flues covering the top, sides, and bottom, so the oven looses heat out the back.
By enclosing the entire back of the oven and firebox with a sheet metal "box" and adding two layers of one inch thick rock wool sheets, held inside the box with long cotter pins, the oven temps went up and the heat distribution inside the oven became more even, thus not needing to open the oven door to turn baking items as often and then having the oven need more time to recover that heat lost with the door open. So not only is less heat being lost to an outside wall, plus the oven was hotter without needing the firebed working hotter, the baking times were also reduced.
Another trick I learned was from Melissa's Mother, who was a school home economics teacher. The oven door has a tin plated panel inside it to reflect heat back in. After 100+ years the tin plating is pretty well gone. Melissa's Mother covered the inside of the oven door with Heavy duty aluminum foil to reflect heat back into the oven.
I removed the oven door panel and wrapped it with two layers of HD aluminum foil and that helped raise the oven temp, also.
Paul
I think we are both agreed that the AGA is not going to be much of a heater for our climate here. Probably not too bad as a cooker. That I will find out in the spring/summer.
Ultimately I want a North American coal range to heat the house and do much of the cooking duties. I am sure a Findlay/Elmira/Heartland Oval can heat the whole house from the kitchen considering a hungry pellet stove in the kitchen currently does a decent job of keeping the whole house cosy. The AGA will become the winter heater and summer range in the summer kitchen when I finish designing it and get to building it. The house has been missing it's summer kitchen for the past 43 years.
I think insulating between the back of your range and heat shield is a great idea and sounds to be beneficial to keeping the oven temps up.
Is there potential to insulate between the oven door and the tin panel? That would likely improve things further. May require you to leave the oven door open when the range is just heating the house.
Reid
Reid