one of the local bread bakeries had an oven collapse and called in peter moore masonry to build them a new one ... while they were in the design phase, one of the things that came up was all this 'free' hot air that would be floating around ... the owner wanted to try dehydrating along with baking so pete called in sam, who took up the challenge ... he installed the dehydrator today and, from the pictures, it looks like it will be pretty slick ... the view above is a head on shot of the bread oven with the dehydrator on the left side, shown in the photo below ...click the pictures to enlarge them ...
the 'frescoed' (colored) plaster is a nice touch ... the installed dehydrator ... the niches are for electrical junction boxes, which i'm sure will get covers before the oven is fired up ....
sam used classic 'angle and sheet' construction to fabricate the main box ... there will be heated air coming in on the bottom rear left and it will go out the top in the upper right hand corner ... there will be stainless racks inside and a small fan to move the air ...
here's a front view before the doors were added. will made the quartersawn oak doors in the woodshop and sam and i modified some hinges to accommodate the stove gasket material that we added to make the doors more airtight. . the expected temperature of the box will be 160-180 degrees so the doors are faced with 24 gauge stainless steel on the inside.
sam added the decorative dampers above to help control the airflow as the fruit is drying ... for more on pete's ovens, see this previous post
a previous vermont brick oven project ...