The Oven Project Continues

At the end of July, I had the oven stand pretty much laid out. Time to work in august was a little hard to find but eventually every other core was filled with concrete

the form for the slab that will support the oven was built

I put in some rebar

and concrete was poured

Yeah...i probably over paid a little for the concrete, but I know my back appreciates it. The right amount of concrete in 50 pound bags from Lowes on sale right now would have cost a little over $100. But, to get that back to the house in my van would have required at least 6 trips and a lot of handling of 2500 pounds of dry mix concrete - put the bags on a cart, wheel the cart to the van, load the van, unload the van to a dry spot, move each bag to the oven, lift and empty each bag into the mixer (which is a little of a balancing act), empty the mixer to buckets, lift buckets into the form.

Instead, for $250, I got more concrete than I needed delivered off a little mixer from Clifton Park Concrete. Plus the owner/operator of the company is incredibly nice and on time...actually a few minutes early.

I bought a cart at tractor supply. My idea was to put six, 5 gallon buckets half filled with concrete and wagon them over to the oven. It worked out great, the pour went pretty smoothly and we only lifted concrete once. If I get I chance tomorrow, I want to take down the rest of the form work. Hopefully the bottom face of the slab looks good. If not, I'll crawl in there and pretty it up. And big thanks to Ryan who showed up after work to help with the pour.

Then this weekend I poured the base insulation. It is a 5 to 1 mixture of perlite and Portland cement. You add enough water to make it look a little like oatmeal. After 12 hours of curing, I was starting to wonder if it would ever harden up. It was still pretty flaky. After 24 hours, the perlcrete was starting to feel solid.

I've got a few more things to run down. I was planning to get everything from Grimm in Green Island but the don't have a supplier for fire clay anymore. I think I found another place to get some. But while I was at Grimm I did pick up Round 1 of bricks and a bag of high temperature mortar. I still have another question or two to ask the forum guys about the build but it's almost time to stop drawing sketches and start cutting bricks.