A Teacher's Guide for teaching an Earth Ovens Courses

[Simha]

I have recently written a facilitators guide to running an earth oven course. I have more material I need to work in so I plan to make some revisions in the near future. I would love any feedback.

You can now download my Teachers manual for facilitating an earth oven course as a PDF document here -
https://www.academia.edu/12121029/Fa...th_Oven_Course

You can download it as a single fold manual (printable) here -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5t...S3M/view?pli=1

You can download it for free as an e-book from Google play here -
https://play.google.com/books/reader...AJ&pg=GBS.PT25

[UtahBeehiver]

Very interesting, reminds me back in the 70s I participated in building a tunnel kiln fired with dried cow manure to replicate Navaho black fired pottery. Looks like all the basics are covered although I am not up to speed on cob ovens, oven opening ratio looks good, can't tell for sure from illustrations if cob wall is isolated from base or not (may act as a heat sink). Looking forward to seeing the final student product.

[Simha]

The ratio for the opening is 63% of the inside dome height which was calculated by measuring many old quebecois ovens that burned clean. The oven base is isolated from the oven by an insolation layer of vermiculite, though it probably could be articulated better. I have taught these courses since 2012 you can see some photos from various courses on my Facebook page here - https://www.facebook.com/BodeEarthOvens

Thanks for your interest and response!

[wotavidone]

Pretty good. I see so many of these weekend courses advertised on the net where it's clear that the students will be taught to build an inferior product.
Dodgey dimensions, no insulation under the floor, or silly claims that broken glass or sand is an insulator, the instructor has no idea what thermal mass actually is. etc.
So it's nice to see someone doing it right.
Interested in the loose unbonded perlite under the floor bricks.
Insulation wise that will be just about the best you can get if there is no cement added at all.
How does it go for floor stability, is there ever any trouble with bricks moving?