Appliances & Cooking

Appliances for the Household

Appliances that are critical include:

  • refrigerator and ice chest for food storage
  • stovetop/microwave/cooking pot for cooking food
  • sink/running water source for cleaning utensils or cookware
  • shower/bathtub for bathing
  • stove for heating the home

Appliances that are not crucial, but important are a washboard/washing machine to clean clothes and a microwave to easily prepare foods quickly. Ideally, homes should have phones to keep in contact with family, employers, and emergencies. During the summer months, it is also important to have some way of cooling the home down (e.g air conditioner, fans) especially if there are young children and infants.

Cooking Safely

Having access to a heating element for cooking food is one of the most important appliances a home can have. Heat is necessary not only to help food taste good, but to remove dangerous bacteria, fungi, and other harmful pathogens that are growing on it.

Stoves should be placed on a raised platform which prevents access by children, and should also have a chimney to allow for adequate ventilation. Smoke from cooking should always have some way of leaving the premises. To maximize the amount of heat your stove gives off, placing it off the axis from a doorway or window will prevent the direct intake of cold air.

These designs and resources provide useful information on different designs for stoves, and stove platforms to build:

Aprovecho Research Center

Engineering For Change

If acquiring a stove is difficult, building a wood-burning stove on your own can suffice. This guide provided by Aprovecho Research Center gives some useful pointers to building one:

Ten Design Principles For Wood Burning Stoves

  1. Insulate around the fire using lightweight, heat-resistant materials.
  2. Place an insulated short chimney right above the fire to burn up the smoke and speed up the draft.
  3. Heat and burn the tips of sticks as they enter the fire to make a flame, not smoke.
  4. High and low heat is created by how many sticks are pushed into the fire.
  5. Maintain a good fast draft from under the fire, up through the coals. Avoid allowing too much extra air in above the fire to cool it.
  6. Too little draft being pulled into the fire will result in smoke and excess charcoal.
  7. Keep unrestricted airflow by maintaining a constant cross-sectional area through the stove. The opening into the fire, the size of the spaces within the stove through which hot air flows and the chimney should all be about the same size.
  8. Use a great under the fire.
  9. Insulate the heat flow path, from the fire, to and around the pot(s) or griddle
  10. Maximize heat transfer to the pot with properly sized gaps.

References:

Winiarski, L. (2005, October). Ten Stove Design Principles [PDF file]. Retrieved April 30, 2020 from http://aprovecho.org/publications-3/.

Aprovecho Research Center. (n.d.). Publications. Retrieved April 30, 2020 from http://aprovecho.org/publications-3/.