The hopefully not obnoxious wood fired brick oven build thread

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paulthenurse

Fecal Transplant Super Donor
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So last spring I opened up my big mouth and promised the lovely Alice a patio for her birthday. Well, I've got 54 year old knees and and a nephew who owns a landscape company and needs to keep his crew busy so the choice was clear. We decided to wait till the fall when his schedule slowed down. They came out here from Sturbridge and knocked it out in a few days.

The first pic shows the area they dug out and the crushed gravel base they laid.



Next pic shows the lads laying down the pavers.



The sorta finished product.

 
Next I decided that I would build something that I've long thought about but never really figured would happen. Well, it's happening.

I started setting up for a foundation off the side of the new patio.


Four Sonotubes go down 4 feet below the frost line.


I used a bunch of busted up concrete and stone to take up some space, then laid rebar in the tubes and wire mesh laid over everything.



The finished base, just in time for winter. If I had continued I would have been stopped cold by the worst winter in recent memory so it's good that I stopped when I did.

 
Spring finally arrived. Thank goodness. What a crazy long winter. I dry laid the cinder blocks and it snowed the next day. Enough already. Here is a view of the foundation base dry laid.



Built a form that sits just below the level of the top of the blocks. It took me a while to find appropriate angle iron to act as lintles to span the opening but perseverance won out.



 
It took me 35 80# bags of concrete to fill up the cores of the cinder blocks and make a 3.5" base. I argued with myself for a long time about buying a cement mixer and eventually decided that I would only use if for a day or two and that would be a tremendous waste of money. So when this past Saturday dawned bright, sunny and warm I went out and bought all the concrete mix, took it home and started mixing like a mad man. Me, a shovel, a hoe and a wheelbarrow. I get 32 of them done, the end is in sight. My arms are cramping so badly I want to quit when SWMBO walks out and says, "I'm going to the gym. I'm impressed, I figured you would have rented a cement mixer for this. I'm impressed to see you opted to do it the old fashioned hard way. Good for you."

I waited till she drove away before I started crying. Seriously, why didn't I think about renting a damned mixer? What an idiot.

So here is the finished foundation base after I stripped off the forms.

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Obligatory name in the concrete shot.

 
And the most recent pics from yesterday. Too much thermal mass is bad, you can never have too much insulation. I mixed up a vermiculate/concrete mix and laid that over the base. The vermiculite base will act as an insulating layer so the oven does not have to heat up the foundation base. I will level the vermiculite pad with fine sand then the floor of the oven will go over that pad. Next up is to find some nice medium duty fire brick. These ovens get up to around 900*F, they can cook a pizza in 90 seconds. The oven itself will be a beehive shape. I've not figured out exactly how I'm going to finish the exterior but have plenty of time to worry about that yet.




 
there is much knowledge to be gained here:
http://www.fornobravo.com

this is on my to-do list as well

That's where I learned all of what little I know. I have a thread going over there for the WFO die-hards but thought I would run a simultaneous one here for the beer crowd. Nothing quite like beer and pizza.
 
Wow that is some undertaking there! That is gonna be so cool when it's done. Wanna come to CA and build one for me? I'll rent a cement mixer for you! ;)

And P.S. - KOTC saw what I was looking at and saw that storebought beer - he says -1 point for not drinking homebrew while you're building that! LOL!
 
Fail is imminent.


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You missed the part about this thread not being obnoxious. Go back to the Obnoxious Masshole thread. Everyone here loves da schweeeet baby Hay-Soos and wants to have a nice pizza pie.

Begone with you!

Can I get an amen?
 
You missed the part about this thread not being obnoxious. Go back to the Obnoxious Masshole thread. Everyone here loves da schweeeet baby Hay-Soos and wants to have a nice pizza pie.

Begone with you!

Can I get an amen?


Ohhhhhhhhh. So now we're not being obnoxious in threads where someone's trying to be serious for a change??? Ohhhhhhhh. Sorry. I forgot this was PAUL'S thread so everyone has to be serious now. Ahhhh. Got it.

Sorry. I keep forgetting Paul's neeeeeever a total flaming *****enozzle in other people's "serious" threads.






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Wow! That is some work there! I would be that friend who never left during spring & summer if I knew you. :D
 
No pics. Minimal progress in the oven between getting the boat ready and helping the Spawn move. Only so much time and disposable income to spread around.

Boat or pizza? WHERE ARE YOUR PRIORITIES?!
 
I've decided to lay more insulating concrete on the base. I'm going to add another two inches on top of the existing insulation layer and extend the layer to the sides. I'm going to use metal studs for the outer walls eventually. I SHOULD be able to use wood, if the oven is so poorly constructed that it would cause wood to catch fire than I pretty much deserve it if it burns down. BUT, no sense tempting the gods, I'll use steel studs and rafters and concrete siding.

So the upshot is that it's taking forever to get the vermiculite. My local garden center assures me he'll have it this week. Sure hope so, I can't wait to get back to building.
 
It was the hot liquor tank with 3-4 gallons of boiling water I decided to take a swan dive off the ladder with.

I don't touch glass carboys anymore. Too dangerous.


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