Building The Dixie Darling

[WarEagle90]

7th course photos.

[WarEagle90]

Ok, I'm starting to think about the vent and the first thing I have to decide is if I will put it on insulation. The dome sits on 4" of calsil board and I have enough to put 4" under the vent too. Is it recommended to insulate the bottom of the vent or does it matter. The vent will have a thermal break from the oven so it shouldn't act as a direct heat sink to the hearth. The vent will be all masonry so it will be heavy. The calsil board has a compressive strength of about 72 psi so it should be fine unless it gets wet. That is my biggest concern. Any words of wisdom?

[UtahBeehiver]

Most of the heat will come from radiant heat rather than transmission heat from the floor especially with a thermal break. Since you have left over CS board why not use it. I placed insulation under my vent area, does it make a difference, beats me! But if did not cost me any more time or money to do it since I had the materials. BTW, nice finish on the taper inner arch, worth the effort?

[WarEagle90]

Yeah, Russell, the tapered arch was well worth the effort. It made the transition more or less painless. Does gravity ever take a day off? It sure would make these last few courses much easier if I could turn it off for a couple of hours .

[UtahBeehiver]

No fooling mother nature, you can see from my pic that I made several adhoc supports to hold the upper course bricks in place. It was a slow go near the end.

After giving it some thought, I remember that Gulf did a "huge" masonry chimney and although he extended his CaSi out from the vent, the arch/chimney base was on a P-crete support. I am not sure how big your chimney stack will be but this is another option.

[WarEagle90]

Didn’t I see someone’s build where they made some metal brackets that supported the bricks from the back? Sort of a L bracket with a lip to slip over the front edge of the brick. I’ve thought about printing such a bracket and include an eyelet so I could suspend a little weight that would keep them in place. Doesn’t take much to keep them in place and the castable I am using on the horizontal joints sets quickly.

Since I will have the thermal break between the dome and the vent arch, I think I will set the vent on the hearth and add the calsil under the vent floor. Vent chimney will be substantial. Very much like Gulf’s.

[WarEagle90]

Dome is closed . But first, lets catch up. Laid course 8 and 9 last weekend. No major issues other than gravity starting to rear its head. Once I got several bricks stuck together, everything stayed in place quite nicely. Started on course 10 Friday afternoon and it just didn't go well. Couldn't get the bricks to stay in place. Tried sticks, tried hanging weights off the back, nothing really gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling that I wanted. So, I resorted to theft. I stole ...... I mean copi ....... heck, borrowed Gulf's method of using a plywood form and a jack. I measured the diameter at the top, inside edge of course 9 and then cut a circle with the same diameter out of plywood. I placed this inside the dome and held it in place temporarily by tying some paracord to a nut and then running the cord through the center hole and tying it around the overhead frame of the canopy I have covering the oven. This allowed me to move the plywood until I got it where I wanted it. I then built a stand in the oven out of brick and one of the spare floor tiles I had laying around. Atop this, I placed a car jack and a short 2x6 to hold the plywood in place. The paracord was removed. I cut another plywood circle that would act as a support to get me the correct angle on the brick and screwed it to the bottom piece. Laid course 10, rinse and repeat. This works great except you can't clean up the joints inside the oven as you go. Got a little sloppy, but some mortar and a little work with the grinder will clean it right up.

I cut the plug from a 3" floor tile. Its about 6" in diameter. It was either that or a real tiny one so I chose the larger one. I haven't cut the top part of the plug yet. I'll do that one afternoon this week. Ok, photos coming.

8th & 9th Course

[WarEagle90]

10th and 11th Course

You can see in the second photo where I let it get out of round there about 3 O'Clock.

[WarEagle90]

Dome Plug

[UtahBeehiver]

On the home stretch, good work.

[Gulf]

Congratulations on the closing! I remember that it felt real good to get that done .

[WarEagle90]

Thanks Russell and Joe. It was a great feeling of accomplishment. I could not have done this without your’s and everyone else’s help. I really appreciate all your input and support. Time to take the FB plunge and get my fat rear end inside the oven and do some touch up work. Then on to the vent. I did make the vent arch form this weekend.

[WarEagle90]

Not a lot of progress the last two weekends. Our son graduated HS last week and he had a celebration party at the house this past Saturday so we have been getting ready for that for the last couple weeks. Between the party and rain not much time for the oven. I did manage to get the vent started. Laid the bricks to support the two arches and cut all the arch brick. Now I just need to put the arch form in place and I can start on the back arch, if the rain will ever subside. Maybe I'll finish it before the boy graduates from college

[Gulf]

I think that I see where you ae going with this. I like your approach to it much better than mine .

[WarEagle90]

Should look quite familiar, Joe. I will add 4”of insulation under the vent floor and then 3” tiles for the floor itself. I’ve got to do some design work on the chimney portion so I will have some idea of where I am going.
Gulf do you find the damper you added to be of use as you intended? I like the idea, but not sure I would need it very often. How do you use yours?