The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site

Force10 Stove (Cooker) Review

This post will undoubtedly floor those of you who have read about our problems, some of them dangerous, with the Force10 stove. And I won’t kid you, we deeply and personally resent the time, effort and money expended over nearly two years that getting this stove working safely and properly has taken—it is simply not good enough in a premium product costing $1300.00.

Now I’ve got all that off my chest, let’s move on to the fact that, now that we have it fixed, Phyllis and I find the Force10 the best marine stove we have cooked on.

Stuff We Like

  • Force10’s ‘patented slide-away oven door’, that “recesses underneath the oven to maximize galley space”, is great since we no longer get pushed out of the galley and strangled by our safety strap when opening the oven door.
  • The ‘push to spark, electronic’ igniters are convenient and actually work, as long as you are willing to replace the actuation switches at least once a year.
  • The three burner model is an efficient design since four pots do not fit in the limited amount of space available, no matter how many burners you have.
  • The different BTU outputs of the three burners (one 8200BTU, two 3400BTU) allow us to move pots between burners depending on how much heat we need.
  • The two small burners are great for simmering when turned right down, to the point that we recently threw away the heat diffusers that we had to use on the old stove for this purpose.
  • The hinged and removable one piece grid over the cook top and the clean design of the top itself makes cleaning easy.
  • The pot holder (to hold pots on the stove while in rough seas) system works better than that on most marine stoves although smaller pots tend not to be properly centered on the burner.
  • The built-in oven heat diffuser plate helps to distribute the heat evenly throughout the oven, meaning that the back of stuff doesn’t burn horribly while the front is still raw, like with our old stove.

Suggestions For Improvement

  • The 8200BTU large cook top burner needs to be larger still, say 10,0000-12,000BTU. The current large burner takes at least 20 minutes to bring a large pot of water to boil, say for pasta, and will not keep the pot on a rolling boil without a lid on (bad for pasta).
  • The grill needs to be substantially larger in power and area. Right now it will barely cook one 8-oz steak. Anything bigger must be constantly moved around to avoid raw spots.
  • The oven rack sliders are too wide, for no good reason that we can see, limiting the width of the oven and therefore the size of pans that can be used in it. The oven is small enough without unnecessarily decreasing usable space further .

Summary

In summary, if you expect the Force10 to work as well as even a basic household stove, you’ll be disappointed. But to be fair, household stoves do not have to fit into a small space, swing, and put up with a marine environment.

Having said that, we regularly cook fairly elaborate dinners for up to six people on our Force10 and almost any meal that we can prepare on a household stove we can do on it, although this does take some planning and ingenuity.

If Force10 were to address the quality control issues we experienced, provide seamanlike mounts, and make the relatively small changes listed above, they would have a fine product for live aboard voyaging boats that would easily justify the premium price they charge for it. I do understand that this market is small, but said changes would, I think, be rewarded by increased sales to the more casual use market too.

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Paul

Hey John,

My wife and I just moved aboard in Seattle, WA. We cleaned and cleaned and now we’re moving on to get this thing operational. We tried to get the Force 10 stove working and are (you guessed it?), having trouble. It hasn’t had much use by the previous owner (I mean it is shiny), it is 11 years old. We lit both of the top burners without much trouble but then couldn’t get the stove to light. After that we went back to try and light the burners and couldn’t get them to light either.
Maybe we aren’t turning it on right? We have the black starter button and the blue button with a flame picture…are we getting the order wrong? The time it did work we pushed in on the knob, turned to high for 10 seconds, then hit the starter button and it worked…now can’t get it to work…

Thanks for any help!

-Paul

Mark Tilley

I see this is an old thread, but since no one has answered …

The lighting procedure is in the manual:

For top burners: Push and hold in while holding black spark button, or if not sparking, use a BBQ lighter. (Use blue flame button for oven only, see below.)

For oven, turn dial to desired temp, then hold in blue flame button while holding black spark button. If not sparking, use a BBQ lighter.

If the burner tops are the old enamel covered cast iron types, ensure the hole feeding the ignitor is clear and there is no rust dust buildup under the burner.

In both cases hold down the knob or blue button for 20s while thermocouple warms up.

marga pretorius

Great article! Know this is an old thread, but wondering how the Force 10 is functioning now for you after all these years? Would you still recommend Force 10 for cruisers over others? Have you heard anything about gn espace stoves? Don’t know if they’re just another Broadwater “flash in the pan” (sorry for that) who promise the sky? Thanks for all your work on the site, I recommend it to people all the time!!

Mark Swanson

Hi John, I am thinking of replacing our Seaward Princess. Now that you have had so much trouble with the force 10 is there another you like? Do you have any knowledge of the Dickinson either the Caribbean or the Mediterranean models?

Terence Thatcher

We replaced our old Seaward with Dickinson Mediterranean a few years ago and installed it with gimbals our machinist made copying John’s design. We wish it had a disappearing door, but it is solid, well built, and as so far worked very well. Way to go you Canadians.