Help - oven has water inside

[asimenia]

This is the first time this has happened - after a very wet winter and full on damp - I went down to the patio to start preparing for Easter (Greek Easter) - open the oven door and was met with a wet through oven!
I have not idea how this happened.
What to do? Not sure if I should break down the surrounding walls and find out what's going on - or just keep firing it up until it's dried out.
Really upset - never happened before.
Thanks for any suggestions or just sympathy!!!

[david s]

Re: Help - oven has water inside

If you fire it up you wil probably find that it will take a long time to get to temp ( 3 hrs or more) and the outside of your oven will be hot to the touch. This means that the refractor,y and the insulation in your oven is wet. Just fire it for a long time ( keep a gentle fire going all day) and it should return to its normal operation. I have just cooked around 10 pizzas for the family and it is now bucketing down. Sometimes we get so much rain that the rain gauge fills 155 mm in 24 hrs. Although the oven has been waterproofed it still gets wet and needs some prolonged firing to restore normal operation. The wet wood does not help either.

[asimenia]

Re: Help - oven has water inside

Thanks - I have a sneaky feeling that my lovely husband left the door open and the rain came down the chimney and into the oven - also I won't be able to feel the outside : see pic. As I no longer have a job and neither does hubby - in these extremely difficult times in Greece I have plenty of time to keep the fire going all day.
Thanks for your help

[david s]

Re: Help - oven has water inside

We were in Greece Sept. '10 and Athens felt like a powder keg ready to explode. On the islands totally different. They are still in the 19th C. Australia has the largest Greek population outside Greece. Maybe you should consider if prospects there are so grim.
At least you can fire the oven for nothing. A beautiful set up you have there.

[asimenia]

Re: Help - oven has water inside

Would love to live in Australia - however we are neither the right age nor do we have a particular skill or money! So looks like we are stuck here with a mortgage (which we will be freezing for the next 4yrs) and no jobs. I have 1,500 euro worth of 'normal' bills and no income .... so I'm enjoying the luxury of the internet and electricity while we still have it! I'm British but have been here (Preveza) for 25yrs married a local 15yrs ago - have two daughters. There's no future here - I had 2 successful clothes shops (until the austerity plan was installed) and hubby is in construction and that's stopped completely. We are owed in the region of 150,000 euros from people who built houses and cannot pay us! It's a big mess! We are not alone in this and we are lucky enough to live in a place where we can grow things and we get free fire wood.

On a positive note - my oven is not ruined. I've been spending my free hours cleaning the area and 'setup' Gives me something to do. I'm about to start planting as well. I'm such a villager
Thanks again