Setting Oven Floor - Fire Clay not available

[jleo]

Sorry I might be entering the wrong conversation, but could someone give me some advice on this?

So i have vermiculite insulation in place (about 5 inches) and now I need to set the oven floor. I do not have fire clay available in my area so i cant do the fire clay and sand mixture.

But i do have refractory mortar. Can i use that instead or is there something better i should use?

Thanks!

[hughjamton]

Just use dry sand.
Any kind of mortar is not recommended, you want the bricks to be able to move.

[jleo]

Thanks for the response! Do you happen to know how much i should add on top? in terms of thickness?

[hughjamton]

As little as you can get away with, it's only to level your floor bricks, I probably averaged about 10mm.
I used pumice dust, only because it was a by product of me crushing the pumice, I was going to use sand,
I used a notched tiling trowel and tapped the bricks with a rubber hammer, if one was too low I just put a bit more dust under it, too high and I scraped a bit out.