Nectre Big Bakers Oven

Hello, I have the vermont/nectre big/xl baking oven. After I achieve a really hot burn the fire always goes out when I close the damper to divert heat to the oven. The oven has been professionally cleaned and inspected through. Yet the fire always goes out with losed damper with windows partially cracked. Please help Show reply

I'm noticing a lot of people not using and caring for the wood cooking stoves properly, but blaming the company for poor build quality. Blockages and such are user error. In the oven below, there is a steel sheet plate, lift it out with your tool supplied to lift the hotplates. You will find a soot build up, clean it out. You can use a small… Read more ·  1

metal shovel pan, you can even vacuum it out if it is all cold. The soot and creosote drops to that section. People with rust issues on the top, it shouldn't get that way in the beginning. Read your manual, but you can rub this off and use stove paint. So many of you shouldn't have a cooking stove to be honest. Others trying to fit logs in them and moaning about things like this, small wood is to be used in this for cooking, it is a wood cooking stove, it does heat your home, but it is not sold as a woodheater. We had The Large Bakers Oven, so have experience with the above, but also 2 metres away we had our woodheater. If you want your wood cooking stove hot, as the manual suggests, you need small wood, small wood, more flames, more heat. Lets all be thankful these are Australian Made and we should support our people. These are not Made in China. I have no affiliation with Glen Dimplex, am not being paid for this, this is general advice as I have experience with a The Large Bakers Oven. I am surprised The Company says sorry in this Product Review pages, when 9/10 times it would all be user error or people not knowing or caring for their woodcooking stove. Look after it, treasure it and it will last forever.

Excellent – This has changed everything for us. You can make dinner or tea on the stove top, fantastic slow bakes or bread, it space heats our 100m2 open plan house, drys laundry, it heats our hot water system. Really solid build and the functional design is well thought out. This thing will run for decades. Forget the Bunnings rubbish, with its 1mm plate,… Read more ·  1

you might get a year out of it. The Necre with 6mm plate steel, is better value for money by far. We organise our day around it. It does take some time to learn it's behaviours but it's the best investment I've made in years.

Small Fire box – I am super disappointed with this oven. The firebox is tiny and cannot fit a log more than 230mm in it. The instructions say to put logs in at a 90-degree angle to the door. Well, when you buy wood it comes in cut lengths of approx 300mm/ They do not fit. I have approx 10 tonne of wood that will not fit. All I can do is put a log in sideways which… Read more

is a pain in the backside as it is not enough to keep the fire burning long as I can only put 1 decent log in at a time.

Love my Nectre Bakers Oven – I’ve had my Nectre Bakers Oven for over 15 years. I absolutely love it. It heats the whole house up. I bake everything in it and on it. It bakes all the oven food evenly and with a great smokey flavour. I also dry all my washing in front of it during winter. The quality and make of this oven is supreme. It has been the best investment for my house and livelihood.  Show details ·  1

Ten good years – I have had my Bakers oven for over ten years.We have it alight almost 24hrs during winter and into the spring.It cooks wonderfull and spreads a good amount of heat around the house.I installed it myself as we are out of town with no issues at all. Barry WA Show details

Great – Not sure what some of the other reviewers on about, this is a great heater for heating & cooking, roasts turn out perfect, slow cook on top, good heat output & efficient to boot, what more do u want! I added an extra length of flue because it was close to an existing chimney, this made it breath much better so if your having problems with yours… Read more

try this. We have an existing ceiling fan in the same room which really helps distribute the heat around the house. Not saying it heats the whole house evenly, which wood heater does? All in all we are very happy with the purchase

6 Years using the Nectre Bakers Oven – Put simply we love it, but it does have a bit of a learning curve, particularly as it's designed for cooking as well as heating. During Winter and a little either side we use the Bakers Oven on a daily basis. Our house is approximately 220m2 and can easily be cut in half for warmth with additional doors closed to direct heat as needed. If we… Read more

put the fire on early, eg before 5pm it warms the living area, and has enough warmth to take the chill off the far end of the house by bed time. Like all fires there is some variance in how much heat it will output - if you run it hard it can put off an incredible amount of heat (by leaving the damper closed so all warmth goes via the oven increases the heat dramatically vs letting it all go up the chimney as I have some people do on Youtube). We constantly have a kettle or two on it so permanently have hot water available. We make frequent use of trivets to keep things hot but not burning while on the cook top. The top of the oven also has hot spots - the very centre being the hottest, then slowly cools towards the edges. Learning to place pots and use the variety of heat in the those places is key to success when cooking on it. It takes about an hour to get the oven properly hot once the fire is lit. Our Bakers Oven can fit about two large and 2 small pots at a squeeze on top. The oven also fits typical square oven trays or as we like to do two 12" pizza trays. This brings me to a common gripe - the thermostat is Not accurate, but with experience you can use it as a guide. We've occasionally hang a separate thermostat in the oven but generally its not worth it after you get used to using the door as a guide only. For my family cooking on the fire creates a wonderful feeling. We live off grid so using the fire to warm the house and cook is highly practical but also gives a sense that we are using the heat to its fullest. We have a bread machine and make dough each night in winter when the fire is on. We put a cast iron pot with lid in the oven for at least 10 mins to preheat. When the dough is ready we drop it in the pot with a little flour, put on the lid and come back about 30 minutes later to remove the freshly cooked bread. My kids Love our home cooked bread over bought bread. Sometimes I would like the slightly bigger top space of the new Big Bakers Oven, but we manage to crowd everything we need on the current one. We do cut and split all our own wood so sizing is no issue for us. The firebox is smaller than most so if you buy wood in bulk from a timber yard you may find some huge pieces don't fit. When we starting the fire we tend to use smaller pieces, but once its burning hot you can add some fairly large pieces, eg we tend to cut the wood so it only takes 2 pieces to fill the firebox to near capacity. Tip - two pieces of wood with fire between them burn Much easier than one large piece that often smothers the coals below it. I don't expect my fire to run all night, and suspect you would struggle getting this to also, unless you want it smouldering all night. We burn seasoned wood only in the fire and haven't had to clean the flu in 6 years. This brings me to the second gripe though. Cleaning the ash from the oven section. Most is easy but the sides where the heat comes down from the firebox is incredibly hard to access which is a problem as we have found a layer forms like a sheet of rusted metal, or ash, I'm not sure which. This can block this section up resulting in poor heating and cooking. You can adjust the intake to the fire via the turnable vent on the firebox door. Make sure to wind this open when lighting, as well as open the back damper. Once the fire is we'll alight close the damper (making the heat drop down into the oven walls and create much more heat), and adjust the front vent to suit. You can also add a water jacket to heat water. Unfortunately we don't have one, and I'm pretty sure it can't be added after leaving the factory. I tried the fire without the two heavy metal side plates in the fire box to see what difference it made. I believe it heats better, and quicker, but I also think it also damages the sides of the fire box so not sure I'd recommend this if you intend to keep the fire for many years. We didn't buy this fire new. It was second hand and had been well used. We restored it and have had it for another 6 years. Aside from light rust from the chimney condensation, or a kettle leaking, its held up very well and looks like we'll easily get many more years from it. I've looked at other fires and many don't look like they will last. The Nectre Bakers Oven is solid. Would I get this again? I'd have no hesitation getting another as the fire is well suited to our needs. If you want a fire that can warm your family, somewhere to cook on and possibly heat your water then this is an excellent fire. We have spent many hours cooking in and on this fire, and just simply enjoying the warmth it provides. Final Tip - only use Seasoned wood. If its wet put a stash somewhere warm and dry like near your warm fire for a couple of days to dry. Your experience will be far easier and more pleasant if you do. I couldn't find this kind of advice when considering the fire years ago. I hope this helps you.

No regrets on purchasing – This is a great addition to any house. Not only do you get a great efficient wood fire but you can cook with it aswell, even put a kettle on top for a cuppa. When winter sets in, my electric oven and gas cooker very rarely get used. The firebox is of a decent size allowing large chunks of wood that will burn from nighttime into the morning… Read more

keeping the house warm. As one reviewer said, yes you do have to clean out the bottom of the oven which we were not told anything about. We had to look that up by ourselves after wondering why smoke was pouring out and the wood would not burn properly. That was after our first winter but 3 years on and no problems as long as you clean it out. Only complaint is that it is difficult to clean. You only have a tiny access area under the plate in the floor of the oven to get a little shovel in to try to scrape out the soot and build up. But I do a little clean out of it about once a week when I clean out the firebox and that is good enough. And yeah you do need to use seasoned wood, if it is green it just won't burn properly in this fire because it's not designed like a standard wood fire due to the built in oven.

Don't regret purchasing this oven at all and highly recommend.

Very good, I'll be putting one in the next house that we're planning – I put one of these in the house that is now our Daughters family home, its great, we had no problem with soot buildup, cooked on it regularly, found it economical to run and a very effective heater for the 80 sq metre house. If we ran it for two hours in the evening the stove would still be warm enough to have the house warm in the morning.  Show details

Fantastic!!! – This is our second winter with the BBO.... so efficient, warms the 25 square house enough for us to wear summer clothes...cooks well...draws well, good controls and I can put a peice of redgum in it overnight and it's still going in morning! Never had an issue. Very happy, best woodburner ever! I've seen cheap copies without the throttle, but… Read more ·  2

this is such outstanding quality. Highly recommend one, if we ever sell, I wan to take it with us! (Incidently we have 4 zone ducted heating but this is way more efficient and cosy!)

Excellent Wood Oven & Super Warm Heating – We've had the Nectre Big Baker Oven for a while now & it's being burning 24hrs 7 days a week since the colder weather rolled in a couple of months ago. It's all I've been using for cooking for the past months, I quickly learnt how to regulate the heat in the oven to obtain the correct cooking temperature required, (Temp gauge on oven door) and… Read more ·  2

it's great for cooking on the stove top too, with plenty of room. The Nectre Big Baker Oven is our main heating source and I have to say it is toasty warm in our house ranging from 20 to 26 degrees and hotter if I so desired. We manage to keep the fire going all night long (6 to 7 hrs) and I believe that is due to the quality and size of the firewood, 95% of the time in the morning there is always a lot of burning red hot coals in the fire box, just a matter of adding more wood. Our night time temperatures often gets below zero and recently we reached -6.8 and it was lovely and warm in our house.

We cut up our own firewood and all the wood we burn is seasoned (dried) for 2 years or more. I believe burning good quality wood is most important to obtain efficient and effective outcomes. Also proper use of the controls (opening the flue) and air intake when first lighting the fire or adding logs when the fire is burning to ensure the build up of creosote does not occur. To make sure the fire burns well the flue needs to be the correct recommended height, this will ensure the flue draws well and the fires burn effectively. There is a plate in the bottom of the oven that can be removed for cleaning purposes and I recently removed it to clean any ash or soot away and there was only a light dusting of ash in there. Prior to having the Nectre Big Baker Oven installed we had a very old IXL wood stove that I would use and I think that gave me a good understanding of how operate a wood fire oven/stove. We could not be happier with the Nectre Big Baker Oven and would recommend it for heating and cooking (cooking times in the Big Baker Oven are the same as a regular gas/electric oven).

Big Baker Dreams Smoked Out – We bought the Nectre Big Baker to put in our new house. While it was being built we installed it in our shed. We also bought a wet back to go in it to connect to our solar hot water. The first thing we noticed was how small the fire box was. This was before having the wet back installed as well. It worked well enough for the first month but then… Read more

we started getting smoke inside whenever the wind would blow. This gradually got worse until we were getting a thick curtain of smoke flooding out of the fire. After reading through the instructions we found you have to pull out a bottom plate in the oven and clean out the soot which has fallen down and blocked off the air flow around the oven. Also the sides of the oven were blocked up with soot as well and had to be scratched out with screwdriver and a coathanger bent up to poke up the sides. All up we got about 2 buckets full of soot. After we did this the fire burnt well again but 6 weeks later the smoke plumes come gushing in again. This happened another 2 times before we decided there is no way we are putting this in our new house.

We rang the retailer who sold it to us and they put us onto the local Nectre rep who proceeded to yell at us after describing what was happening and that we weren't happy.

What was made clear is that the Nectre Big Baker is not a fire (by design). It is a cooker, and the design unlike a fire where the chimney goes into the fire box, the smoke circulates down the sides of the oven, under the oven then up the rear of the oven and into the chimney. Leaving a soot trail all the way. He told us we were burning green wood. It was not green. It was the same wood our neighbors were using and they had no problems with their standard fires.

We talked to 2 installers who both said they were always cleaning them out. One said they need to be burnt hard and hot to keep them clean and that they are not a good design for a wet back to go in as it draws to much energy from the fire.

We rang Fair Trading and were going to raise a complaint but with the stresses of building a house we decided against it and sold the oven to a retailer.

So finally I would say, if you are romanticising with the thought of cooking on your wood heater like we were....use your electric oven and buy a normal wood fire.