Christo's Cucina

[christo]

Getting closer

Here is my vision for my outdoor kitchen.

Please let me know what you think and give me any guidance and input on how to improve my pizza making before I commit to this design.

Thanks!!!

Christo

[redbricknick]

Looks good Christo. Are you putting storage under the countertop wings? I think the little digital guy in the foreground needs a girl. He looks sad.

[dmun]

That hole

That hole on the right hand counter - is that an opening for a tandoori oven?

Your design looks nice, I like the corner oven placement, and the matched arches.

[christo]

specifics

Thanks - the guy in the drawing is a little sad - He does not have a pizza oven.....

I should be a little more specific about my concerns. If you like you can message me off the list as well.

I'm using a pentagon shape of the oven to try to reduce the overall impact and to fool the eye on the overall size/mass of the oven. I will make the oven opening the same height as my tennis swing/peel swing ? which to me seems to be about 44 inches. The shape of the oven tends to reduce the space on either side of the opening - I thought that was a good thing but now have concerns that I may be making it too tight. This is where I need advice from oven users......

The right side:

The holes on the side are a charcoal grill - placed conveniently to dump coals from the oven to the grill. The smaller hole is a sink that will be serviced by a greywater drain/gravel sump. I'm on the fence about adding a fridge. Is a refrigerator a 30 feet from the house useful? Maybe swap the grill for a fridge? Area to right of sink is intended for dough prep prior to company adding toppings at left counter. Counter top height is right now the same as oven opening height that will have to be changed. A sink/grill at 44 inches wont work. I could compromise on oven height to lower the countertops as well. Looks like another trip to the drawing board.

The left side:

This is a pizza prep/counter/bar area ? Also same height as the oven opening - people can stand or sit to make/eat pizzas. The set back under the top is for knees/stools. - I'll make my own 3 legged stools ? I can adjust height to conform to the height in terms of seating. Countertop/bar area same height as oven opening ? any concerns here?

One of James?s ovens is used as an inspiration for the oven enclosure - I will have some lighting in the niches on either side of the oven, as well as either side at the countertops ? this lighting is not yet determined.

Material choices ? Concrete/Terrazzo for the countertops/oven transistion ? I intend to epoxy LED?s to marbles and place them in the concrete forms prior to the pour. The marbles will act as diffusers for the LED?s ? my experiments so far make me think this will be really fun. Stucco is the planned material to finish the rest.

I finished mounting a Web cam to the back of my house and hope to fire it up soon ? I wrote a program to take daily pics and hope to turn them into a time lapse movie of construction.

The drawing was done with Google Sketchup - just downloaded it - very easy to make 3d drawings at scale.... and sad guy comes with it for free!!! (actually the whole thing is free for personal use)

Thanks

Christo

[christo]

Re: Christo's Cucina

This has become an officially sanctioned project of the SEPOBA (South Eastern Pizza Oven Builders Association).

I'm very disapointed in my time lapse camera - resolution is very poor. Gonna have to find another.

The Pics below should look a little bit familiar..... They are my first sets of triangles for the oven!!!

Don't get too scared. I will not make this a Dmun rerun - I will be focusing only on apparent differences in assy technique based on his suggestions and my ideas.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself as I'm cutting the oven dome pieces before the foundation is poured. More to follow!!!!

[carioca]

Re: specifics

<SNIP>

I'm on the fence about adding a fridge. Is a refrigerator a 30 feet from the house useful? Maybe swap the grill for a fridge?

Christo

Hey Christo, have you thought of a 12 V DC fridge/freezer thing? I bought a Waeco set of compressor/evaporator units about a year ago to either use in my VW Transporter with a 300 L insulated chest-type box or as supplementary cooling for my wine cellar. Haven't made up my mind yet (there's an oven to finish first). But you could run it off a 70 A/h type battery and a solar panel with regulator to keep the battery charged...

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Carioca

[christo]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Well..... It's been a crazy couple of days....

Cut down a few trees.... Tied one off to another just incase it went towards the house. Which it did. Sure glad I tied it off. Landed about 3 feet from the garage. Cut it up quickly before my better half saw what I did.

So......I hired out the rest of the 11 trees and the stump grinding.

The site for the future patio, future kitchen, and future pizza oven is now secured!!!

I sold one of my project cars to finance the tree removal. Boy is my wife happy!!!

This is a big project and I decided to build the oven first so I can enjoy it along the way and use it as a bribe to get help to finish the rest of it!!!

I hope I enjoy the oven as much as I've enjoyed the planning and prep so far!!!

Christo

[christo]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Did not take Daves advice to build the geo dome triangle by triangle. Well, that's not totally true. I left the two partial hexagons over the door and the top pentagon unassembled and hoped that would be enough to fudge during assembly.

I decided to assemble the hexagons and pentagons upside down so I could ensure they were flat and consistently shaped. I made a jig to assemble each pentagon or hexagon roughly 1/16 of an inch smaller on all sides to attempt to have a chance at an 1/8 inch joint line.

The hex and pent jigs were constructed with drafting tools and I had to search the internet as I forgot how to construct a pentagon by hand. I made the center dowel supports by trial and error. I buttered each triangle and assembled and then tapped them to hit the line I drew on the boards. It is amazing how well they looked when I flipped them over.

I did one pair of hexes and pents per day as one thing I found about the refrax - it did not seem to have the initial bonding strength that heat stop does. But wait 3 or 4 days and it becomes literally hard as a rock. The other nice thing - is that when I flipped them over the next day I could still wash off any extra mortar. I saved the rest of my refrax to assemble my oven arch.... I want that sucker to be tough!!! My oven will have the dark mortar lines of the refrax holding the small pieces together and the lighter morar lines of heat stop holding the hexes and pents together.

First or second of many mistakes: As I did not think about compensating for the mortar joints inbetween the hexes and pentagons when initially cutting them I had to go back to desert domes and calcuate the dome size based on the triangles I had cut. Turns out to be just about 1 meter. Whoda thought......

I drew the circle on a piece of cardboard and mocked up the intial ring as it was going to be the most important part of my journey.

Things look like they will fit.

[wlively]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Chris

Nice looking pentagons, it looks like your dome will be a sight to see.

And I thought my wedge dome was becoming labor intensive. Let's just say it's a good thing I am better building airplanes than masonry.

[dmun]

Re: Christo's Cucina

It's interesting how much darker the refrax is from the heat-stop. I think the contrast is nice. Looking good!

You may find, once you start to assemble that the bottom ring isn't exactly flat.

[christo]

Foundation

The foundation started with lots of roots and digging with an ax and pick.

It was hard work digging down through the top soil until we found undistrubed earth.

My friend had returned his loaner cement mixer to his contractor so I ended up buying and putting together a harbor freight model - this set us back a couple hours in our schedule. My brother in law was a great help putting it all together. We thought digging the foundation was tough until we started mixing concrete.

Attached are pictures of the pentagon frame (had to do it!), a pic of me bending rebar with a pipe (really not too hard - see next post - too many pics in this one), trial fit of the chain link fence in place of reinforcing mesh. There is also the obligatory picture of my brother in law resting in front of yet unabused cement mixer while I worked (BTW - he worked really hard on this in real life)

The cement mixer worked surprisingly well. We were careful at first and then started to set it up right and dump two 80lb bags of concrete mix, water it down and start it up. Made a lot of noise but mixed up really well.

More to come!!

Christo

[christo]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Foundation is complete and block walls are getting laid.

I lost my detail plans for constucting the base out of block and minimizing cutting of the block. We gave up trying to find the plan and decided to wing it due to a few reasons: Oven was now a little larger and my brother in law thought it would be useful to have a door in the back.

We mocked up the walls, made a list and went out to buy some 8x8 block and concrete lintels. I had plenty of scrounged 8x16 block. We also bought some 4X16 block to divide the inside of the hearth and act as a permanent cross member to the hearth. Since the cores do not go through all of this material, we will stucco it later with the fiber reinforced stucco designed to make mortarless walls.

When we came back we mocked up the walls again - totally differently. Made out better with this layout. Very few cuts and nice sharp reference points on all but one corner. Turns out the door in the back allowed for an easy transistion as well. For us it paid off to play with the blocks a little before building.

For the lintels - they did not have any large ones at the concrete supply company near my house. But we came across some knock out blocks - these blocks have a cut down the center - I thought the cuts were for angle iron. The slot is there to make it easy to knock out the center webs to allow conduit to be placed in the wall. We bought some big angle iron, too.

We cut the knockout/lintel blocks to fit and lay them upside down on the driveway. We inserted the angle iron and filled the cores with concrete to make sure the blocks did not rotate when we placed them on the block wall the next day. They worked out really well and not overly heavy for two people to lift into place.

Christo

[christo]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Hearth pour was fun. We learned alot about the cement mixer and handling 80 lb bags of concrete.

We also learned that duct tape does not stick to wet form board or concrete block. We ended up putting duct tape along the inside of the form and using a staple gun to attach it to the form to seal any block to form gaps. Sealed all the concrete leaks really well.

We drilled holes in the block and inserted nails to support the 2x6 form made form the foundation forms. We shimmed it level but had to hang block from all corners of the form to keep it level.

Christo

[redbricknick]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Any orange slices in those Blue Moons?

[Xabia Jim]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Nice progress Christo....and I like the shape!