WFO Location

[mfiore]

My wife and I are having a "dialog" about where to place our WFO. I would love to hear some comments. From looking through the forum, it seems the ovens are positioned all over. Some inside, most outside. Some incorporated within a full, deluxe outdoor kitchen. Others off on their own, near a deck or patio, and some seem to be way out in the middle of nowhere.

I'm most interested in hearing from those that do not have their oven as part of an outdoor kitchen. How far from your house do you need to walk to get to the oven? Is it a problem? If your oven is in the far corner of your yard, does in impair your use of it?

[Ken524]

Re: WFO Location

Mfiore,

Good question. My oven is being built next to our back patio. We have walkout basement; our kitchen is on the 2nd floor. This is a bit of an inconvenience because of transporting food and supplies from the kitchen down to the oven (and vice-versa). I didn't have any other suitable location. We will make the best of it by building food prep tables on the patio for parties.

I would have loved to put the oven just outside the kitchen on our deck, but that obviously wasn't going to work.

[Frances]

Re: WFO Location

My oven is about 10 m from the kitchen door and right beside our garden house thingy - which turns out to be a really good place, because I can prepare pizzas outside even when its raining (as I discovered yesterday...)

I think the closer an outside oven is to the house, the more likely you are to use it the year round. For instance, magine dragging a 12 pound turkey all the way down the garden and running out there to check it every so often.

Having some kind of table standing somewhere near the oven is a good idea, too. It doesn't have to be a permanent fixture, but you do need a surface to prepare the pizzas and to put food on while you're opening and closing the oven. Running in and out of the house with a pizza peel isn't much fun - that's what I found anyway.

[talisker63]

Re: WFO Location

I have my oven in the back corner of my suburban block. It's about 15m from the kitchen door. A little too far but this corner is also well away from all of my neighbors houses so it has the major advantage of no smoke getting into my or anyone else's house. This I think is important for good long term relations...

[dmun]

Re: WFO Location

My oven is in the back of the yard, built into the wall of a former garage now workshop building. It's next to the patio, which in nice in the summer, but in our climate, there's not that much summer. I end up, most of the year, making pizzas or other dishes in the kitchen, and doing marathon sprints up and down five steps, and a hundred feet or so, back and forth to the kitchen/dining room. It's a little wearing. I think the best plans have the oven under an enclosure, near the kitchen. I know this sometimes means bigger chimney and more building, but just being able to step out of the kitchen to tend the oven would be a big plus.

As to having it inside, that creates order-of-magnitude problems, as it's now part of the house, and has to have fireplace grade footings, and adhere to building code. It's nice if you have room for it, but it's way better to have an outside oven than no oven at all.