"The Daltonator" Woodstoves And Storage Tanks

Bakers Choice Cook stove
Heart Of
"The Daltonator"

The Bakers Choice Wood Cook stove is the heart of "The Daltonator" DIY project and plays a vital role in the domestic hot water "off grid" heating system. Not only does this stove heat our house we also prepare some really hearty home cooked meals and what's more produce all of our hot water. The Bakers Choice Wood Cooker is a utilitarian style stove that is built like a tank from solid cast steel, without the flashy brass and copper that you find on modern day stoves. Built by the Mennonites this stove is all about getting the job done. It has a large stainless steel cooking surface with two removable cooking rings. A bread warming oven and a large enough cooking oven to fit a 20lb turkey. You can stoke the firebox with a 20 inch log and it will burn all night. The really cool thing with this stove is the stainless heat collector that fits inside the firebox.





Stainless Steel Heat Exchanger



Pressure And Temperature Gauges

Water is pumped with a Grundfos Boiler Pump through the heat exchanger and circulated through the domestic hot water tanks. I have increased the storage to 100 gallons of on demand hot water and the system is capable of boiling the storage tanks and so I had to engineer ways to control this. By using two control valves I was able to redirect hot water into a preheating heat exchanger and then back into the system. This effectively heated more cold water and acted as a heat dump for the tanks. Later I will be building radiators to heat other areas of the home. I also installed a 220 psi blow off valve and temperature and pressure gauges.



Water Storage Tanks



This is the storage system and pipe work that resides in the basement. I used the NASA like insulation rated at R60 to minimise heat loss. During the colder months we rely on the Cook stove to maintain the water temperature. When the sun is strong enough we then we rely on the Hydroponic Panel to do the job. Both can operate at the same time or independently.