Build a Garden Pizza Oven for £Zero and No Pence (ish)
Cob, is a traditional building method that uses clay, subsoil, and straw. It's nearly free as you either dig the materials out of the ground or cheapy buy it from your local quarry :)
We already had "the book" but one thing is clear that when mixing these together you need to have literally a "feel" for when it is ready to use.
This was our chance to get our hands dirty, a day course "Learn To Build an Earthen Pizza Oven" run by Kate & Charlotte of "Edwards Eco Building"
The day started with a chat, some theory and a quick rundown of why people had come on the course, reasons ranged from "It's something interesting to do" through to "When renovating out house we discovered that it was made of cob" via the rather more prosaic "I really fancied having a pizza oven in the back garden"
Then we got cracking
You mix clay and subsoil (Basically very rough sand, grit or if you are buying it "10mm Ballast") with a bit of water and the best method for this is to "Dance it in" (apparently) and If you mix it on a tarpaulin you can also roll it together as part of the process, as shown below:
You need to reserve some of this “not actually cob” for lining the oven, and to the rest add some clean straw, then after more stomping and rolling you should get to the “Dinosaur Poo” stage
Then we had lunch, Pizza from “One we made earlier”, lovely (and quick, see the video below)
Building the Oven:
On any base (just to have it as a useable height) you need a surface of firebricks (reclaimed from storage heaters is a good free/cheap source) and levelled in sand.
On this you build a dome of wet sand which is smoothed off with a wet trowel. Next using hand sized bricky blobs of the straw-free cob you build around the mound, smooshing layers together as you go.
Once covered, cut out a space for your door.
The door should be a piece of thick hardwood and you should cut a tight fitting hole and leave the door there while you build the next layer.
This is the outer layer that provides the thermal mass for the oven, and its where you use the proper cob. Once done, wet troweling smooths it off.
You can decorate it, and plaster it (clay, soft sand and goat hair) and then leave it to dry for a day or so.
We didn’t have that so we removed the door, scraped out the sand, and then a guy called Rob stood on it to prove how sturdy it was.
All this happened in the eye-wateringly picturesque surroundings of Kate and Charlotte's cob-built home, complete with personal view of the broads.
Below is that view, a cob fireplace and a pre-existing pizza oven
What a great way to spend a day, and spark a new obsession: “You could do THAT with cob!”
Another weekend, more digging
We're planning a tamped earth floor, which will be lovely but needs a deeper pit than previously planned.
And so it begins
The story so far:
Bought a new book Earthbag Building
Had a delivery of 500 polyprop bags
Marked out the circle and started digging out the foundations
I ache
Whoops
So today I noticed that, despite all the careful measuring, the kink in the fence don't go "that" way, but "this" way
Still the revised plan took a lot less time :) and is better in terms of retaining garden space and figuring out the roofing (the bags will finish flat and the roof will sit on top)
Take 2:
A Man a Plan a. . . . . . . . Garden Building
We're running out of space, so we're building a garden room.
With nearly no budget
And nearly no experience
But, I have downloaded Google SketchUp, made a model, so that's good.
So far we've:
- Found out about Earthbag Building on Instructables.
- Checked if we need planning permission (we don't if we keep it under 2.5m high and less than 50% of the land.
- Bought the "Earthbag Building Guide" by the same guy, Owen Geiger.
- Mapped the garden (Ivy and Eric are on summer holidays)
- Done the basic plan (above)
- Worked out (got from sketchup) Approx wall area (60m²) and length (32m) and reckon we'll need:
- 1100 bags
- 1200m barbed wire
- However as we don't yet know for sure how big the bags will make up to so we: Ordered 500 Bags
About Me
Al NappA very fat man aiming to be merely a bit chunky
See the "About Al" page for more details, or the "Marcia" page for my wife's site.
Tags
- JustPiccies (25)
- family (24)
- TYSIC (20)
- Comedy (15)
- Cornwall (11)
- CycleogicallyChallenged (9)
- Holiday (9)
- AboutAl (8)
- WMSF (8)
- EarthBag (7)
- View all 92 tags »
