Lighting a Walker riserless core

Hi all;
As many of you know I built an outdoor kitchen this summer.
Unlike many  that are only summer kitchens , it is a year round kitchen!

I used Matt Walker's plans to build what he calls a BBQ and I call a Black  or White oven.
It uses his riserless core design.
When building, I had the choice of using ceramic boards to assemble the core or I could use heavy firebrick in split and full size.
The main difference between the two is ease of starting.
A ceramic core needs no warmup time to start a draft.
Startup on those will be quick and easy.

With a heavy brick core , getting a draft started can be challenging.
Rather than rising  up thru the oven  the heat initially sinks into the firebricks.
The smoke stalls  and seeks the easy way out...  thru the door!

I have learned tricks to help speed the process.
Building  a small stick fire way back by the secondary air tube.
Using a lit paper to stick as far in the core as I can.
And last of all is my trusty high output propane torch!  
It really helps convince the heat to move thru the core and up into the oven/ chimney.
In the summer and early fall I expect 10-20 minutes of time spent getting my  heavy brick riserless core up to cruising speed.
Once its warmed up  your Dragon will fly!

Why would I use a hard starting material like heavy firebrick rather than easy starting ceramic boards?
I use my oven as a long slow cooker.  For me the hard start is worth the long even heat.
With a fast heating ceramic core,  more traditional fast cooking times are used.

I went out yesterday morning to fire up the oven in preparation of smoking a pork roast.
14F and a rare sunny morning outside.
I fully expected a normal startup lag of ten minutes or so.
I was pleasantly surprised when she took off without  a single puff in the wrong direction!
Seems like if its cold enough outside the heat has no trouble finding its way up thru the chimney!

Magnificent job Thomas !
I’ll just pretend that that last picture was a tofu roast!
Living out in the desert now, it’s nice to see the snow and a warm fire as a nice reminder of what I would be doing myself also right now.
I would imagine you can keep warm by the radiant heat coming off the doors while putting around in the smoke shack?
Even though you didn’t mention it, I also know that you are happy with the hard fire brick to withstand the constant dings that the firewood would be constantly damaging the soft interior of either insulated bricks or CF board.

The whole construction looks great and personally I think the bricks are a much wiser decision  than ceramic mat.

I was fully expecting a picture of that finshed roast.  Don't tease me like that Thomas!

That looks sturdy and well put together. I would have done the bricks instead of CFB, too. I wonder if you put a nice tall insulated chimney on that if the stack effect would help your lighting issues on marginal days. My RMH certainly behaved better after I put a dual wall pipe section on the outdoor part of the flue.

If building a batch box for anyone else, I would always use dense firebrick splits for the floor and sides of the firebox. Most people I know who have used wood stoves expect to be rough with loading and I wouldn't want to try to train them to gentleness, or replace the liner every few years. I also like the retained heat that keeps the coals hot until they finish burning to ash.

By the same token, I like the low-mass secondary burn area for relatively quick heating up. I see no good reason to make following parts like the floor of a cooktop space from heavy material.

Thomas, try that one day!

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