Christo's Cucina

[christo]

Re: Christo's Cucina

More of the dome is complete. So far no cutting of preassembled pieces, but we did have a joint that was hitting the max of 3/8 inch. We fussed around with that one for a while and tried to minimize the size of the gap. We got into a situation where there was not room for clamps and switched over to using sticks to support the pieces.

I stressed out my brother in law by getting a little over confident with the mortar. I was taking out supports less than 15 mins after we placed the polygon - no tragedies this day.

We assembled all the preassembled pieces - and a few of the individuals. Washing the bricks after install was a pain - lots of water and sponges but it looks really nice when finished.

At the top is the hole for the pentagon - I thought that would be the last piece. But it looks like we will work down towards the door.

I'm having a really bad hair day and hadn't shaved - but I left the picture in there anyway....

Christo

[maver]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Christo, that is coming along great! - thank you for posting your progress pictures

[christo]

Re: Christo's Cucina

It was a late night but the first two rings were completed.

Christo

[christo]

herring bone floor is finished

We mixed up fireclay and applied it to the new hearth with a notched trowel. We were going to apply a layer of foil over the clay to create a moisture barrier between the hearth and the iso board, but it had rained the night before and the iso board was soaked (and heavy). We opted out of the foil and placed the board on the clay. The board became very stable.

As the board was wet we decided to try the notched trowel and clay on the isoboard. This did not work at all.... The wet Iso board still sucked enough of the water out of the clay that the firebrick would not press down - even with some hammer taps.... We scraped all the clay off the isoboard and put down dry clay. My brother in law and sister did a nice job on the herringbone floor while I cut bricks and continued to mock up the dome.

This is where we ran into some of the same problems that Dave talked about when he built his Oven. Huge gaps all over the place. It looked much better during our trial assembly on the driveway. At the end of the head scratching, we adjusted the diameter of the dome 1/2 inch and things started to line up rather nicely.

As expected from Dave's advice (but still not totally understood why), the bottom row needed to tilt in a bit and there was a gap most pronunced with the half hexagons. Instead of trimming the pieces to fit, we added a little bit of extra mortar to one end of the first row of half bricks.

Clamps - lots of clamps came in handy. Orange slices in the beer and wine were optional, but Ibuprohen was mandatory at this stage.

Christo

[Xabia Jim]

Re: Christo's Cucina

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

[redbricknick]

Re: Christo's Cucina

Any orange slices in those Blue Moons?

[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

[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]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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

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!!!!