Thought I'd add alittle more on building the oven. Once the blocks were up I had to shutter the top and lay the base for the oven to sit on. It was a sand, gravel and cement mix with some old bits of reinforcing rods that I had lying around in the garden. As I recall I did this and then laid about 2ins of vermiculite, sand and cement to give a bit of insulation.
The next job was laying down a bed of sand to lay the fire bricks on. I managed to scrounge some bricks from a skip for the base and then retrieved some more from a friend's old storage radiators that he was going to throw out. This gave me enough fire bricks to lay the base and construct a first course of bricks upon which I could then start building with clay.
As testimony... I was present at a number of the 'firings' this year and the results for cooking are stunning. We've had Pizzas, Keema nan, Chicken tikka, Roast beef... all fabulous. And now the roof is finished it just looks the muts.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen bricks stood on end around the floor like that. Any particular advantage to doing it that way?
ReplyDeleteI wanted to get a good height to support the bottom of the sand dome and stop it slipping outwards. It worked very well: the quantity of sand that was required to make the dome was very difficult to keep packed tight so it worked a treat.
ReplyDeleteHope this answers your query.