About Ovens

[paul]

Since we are still in the oven planning stage I was hoping to get a
little feedback on our oven design.

We are planning to do cob. Does anyone have good input on where to get
the materials cheaply or freely?

We are thinking of an inside width ~ 26" and inside length ~ 30".
Following Kiko's empty bottle plan for insulating the base, our
cooking surface should end up ~41" off the ground. Does this seem like
a good size? Too big too small?

Also Kiko talks about the door being pron to damage and suggests it my
be a good idea to form a brick doorway. Any thoughts on this.

Paul

[Christopher Gronbeck]

> We are planning to do cob. Does anyone have good input on where to get
> the materials cheaply or freely?

We mostly got ours from Craigslist. The soil/clay, broken sidewalk
chunks, etc. was all obtained that way. The only two things we ended
up having to purchase were construction-grade sand (all of the free
stuff was beach sand, which isn't good) and one bale of straw. The
manure and fire bricks were donated by participants.

> We are thinking of an inside width ~ 26" and inside length ~ 30".
> Following Kiko's empty bottle plan for insulating the base, our
> cooking surface should end up ~41" off the ground. Does this seem like
> a good size? Too big too small?

I'm sure that's fine...ours is about a 27" diameter circle inside.
Ours is lower, though...probably more like 30" cooking surface. I
like how low it is--easy handling--but I've seen restaurants with
higher ovens, and that seemed to work, too...you certainly get good
visibility when it's higher.

> Also Kiko talks about the door being pron to damage and suggests it my
> be a good idea to form a brick doorway. Any thoughts on this.

I would say yes on this...we wanted to do ours with 100% cob, and the
one part of the oven that's been damaged has been the opening. Cob is
easy to repair, so no biggie, but reinforcing the doorway in some
manner would be nice. At least the outer part of it where a pizza
peel might most often impact it.

Good luck!

Christopher