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Hi Jamie,
You have a good eye! Yes, the chiminey is a bit higher up than I would have liked. I marked it right over the door as far forward as I could on the sand form, but that really didn't take into account the thickness of the walls and how I needed to bring the walls forward a bit to match up with the flat plane of the arch around the entry. When I was walling in the last bit of the walls to connect the top of the arch to the dome it occured to me that that is where the chiminey really should be--but I was too eager and too close to having a working oven to desire to change it at that time. However, the chiminey opening seems fairly small--formed around a glass bottle I had (about the size of a typical wine bottle) and my plan has always been to make a removable adobe plug. For right now, I am covering it with either a brick or an old empty powdered milk can when I want it closed. I'll experiment a bit and see what seems to work best, venting or no vent. I will say that I think it is easier to block it up if I don't want it than it would be to decide to add it after the oven was built...
On the fancy WFOs, do people put in a way to close off the chiminey using some sort of switch (flue?, baffle?--not sure of the right word)?
As for the door height, I was aiming for the actual opening height to be about 60 percent of the interior dome height...thought I read that ratio (though never I didn't see it explained precisely), somewhere, though maybe I misunderstood... Not sure what percentage I actually got as we eyeballed the whole build, constantly adjusting things as we worked to build it.
Oh, another thing on the to do list is it improve the fit of the door-- I want to add a little mud to make a slight "backdrop" that the door fits into so the edges seal better when I want it fully closed.
Yes, still lots to do, but most of the time when I'm home the oven is HOT and I am too busy cooking to work on it for right now. After a year and a half of basically only boiled or fried food it is really great to have an oven! I will say I am going through a ton of firewood though so at some point I really should look at these issues and make adjustments/finishes.
Hi Drake,
Thanks! Building one of these really is a big project with a lot of hard work needed. I will say, every step of the way this seemed to take longer and need more hard work that I thought it would. The manual labor is pretty intense mixing all the cement mannually, then the adobe by hand (foot), lifting all the wet sand up to make the form then removing it...
The amusing thing during the build was all the speculation of the neighbors as to what we were building. Water tank was the most popular idea, followed by dog house... Got lots of people dropping by to see what was happening; now to see what is cooking and try the food... I've had lots of people tell me they will come by to use the oven--but no one actually has so far (but I have been pretty busy cooking) My German Shepherd stays right near the oven (hey, HE likes it) which does cut down on the gawkers a bit or I'd be overrun.
--Janine
Last edited by Janine M. LeGrand; 09-24-2009, 05:24 PM.
Reason: punctuation
On a conventional WFO the chimney is "outside" of the oven. I.e. the door is between the oven and the chimney. What you have is probably, arguably, more like a tandoori oven. When truly baking you will want to plug the chimney to keep the heat in! A qustion you might ask yourself is why the smoke can't just come through the door? (Answer may be your dome is too high??? which is why WFOs tend to have farily low domes (otherwise it is a sooty dead space at the top of the oven.
In any event, you have an oven that works and cooks and you wlill learn how to make it sing!
Hi Janine,
You really did a great job,, I understand you are a missionary.. Will you be staying there for a long time to help the people or will you be moving on eventually ?.. Travelling the world building brick ovens would be a great job, plus your missionary things.. If you teach a man to cook, you feed him forever.. Thanks again for sharing,, How about some more pics of food you've cooked
Mark
On a conventional WFO the chimney is "outside" of the oven. I.e. the door is between the oven and the chimney. What you have is probably, arguably, more like a tandoori oven. When truly baking you will want to plug the chimney to keep the heat in! A qustion you might ask yourself is why the smoke can't just come through the door? (Answer may be your dome is too high??? which is why WFOs tend to have farily low domes (otherwise it is a sooty dead space at the top of the oven.
In any event, you have an oven that works and cooks and you wlill learn how to make it sing!
Well done!
Jay
On cob/adobe ovens there frequently is no chimney. I have every intention of building a chimney into mine, but I admit working out the logistics is challenging. My current theory is that I'll let the body of the oven dry before constructing an outer arch and chimney on a wet sand base. The fun starts when I try to get the sand out of the chimney. I really prefer a squirrel tail but I haven't worked out a good way to get the sand out.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot
"Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal." -Mike Ditka
I have a question around how the locals see this oven. I did some looking on the cooking rooms and some new ideas for cooking there, but did not see anything like this type of oven.
Wow Janine!
All your work is so impressive - very inspiring. It makes me feel stupid for fretting so much about every step on my build - I have everything at my fingertips!
How long have you been in Uganda? How long had it been since you enjoyed bread and pizza?
Thanks for sharing your experience -we (my family who I'm reading this all to and showing them your pictures)really learned some new things - especially about the termite soil! We had termites swarm out of our house twice the year we moved into it! Yuck.
Who would have ever thought - termite mound soil....!
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