BeanAnimal's 42" build - Pittsburgh PA

[GreenViews]

Looking good!

[BeanAnimal]

Today’s update:

Worked about 2.5 hours.
Got about an hour of brick work in and the rest of the time was prep, site cleanup and mortar cleanup. I am going to cover the floor with ramboard. I spend as much time cleaning as I do setting brick.

You will notice a slight dip in 2 of the back bricks. I did not notice this until I began cleanup. It took every fiber of my being to not rip them out and reset them. I don’t know if they were both slightly undersized or I didn’t bed them well enough. I image I am going to be the only person to ever notice and I don’t want to start obsessing about perfection. Just trying to enjoy this and not stress about being perfect. I think I can easily sort it out on the next layer.

finished layer 1 and 3/4 of layer 2.

[BeanAnimal]

Today’s updates

Oven floor completed on Monday, but I did pry up the front 3 tiles and one to the right and reset them. They were the first ones I set on Monday and I was not happy with their flatness. I. Noticed it. Ugh more this morning than in the waning light last evening.

last evenings progress.


The bird’s eye view


getting trammel setup and marking arch area.
FWIW the trammel in this kit is very well made. It is a fixed radius, but the larger kits have a variable length/pitch trammel for non hemispherical domes.


arch form in place and 1/3 of the first layer done. The mortar (2 part) in this kit is far easier to work with than the heatstop I used years ago. I am actually enjoying working with it.


losing daylight... these went fairly quickly. I should be able to make good progress working for an hour or two each afternoon.

[BeanAnimal]

In my case - the layer of refractory is for thermal mass.

I would not be (at all) concerned about CalSil being UNDER the cooking floor.
The dangers of products like this are from the fibers becoming airborne and inhaled - and in most cases that requires the product to be abraded or in a friable state and exposed.

The layer of bedding sand and the brick floor will effectively encapsulate the insulating layer. There is no need to worry.

[fhausback]

Bean, it looks like your about 2 weeks ahead of me so i have no advice for your mortar sand. But i'll be watching for good ideas to steal.

In regards to sealing your calsil with refractory, is that only to add thermal mass? What does the hive mind think about sealing the calsil from a safety POV? Calsil is not something i'd want to breath in or sprinkle on my pizza. Does anyone think we should be adding a barrier between it and the hearth bricks?

[BeanAnimal]

I got the floor brick set yesterday evening. Not happy with a few of them, got caught fielding a work call while I was working on the oven and the sun was going down. I got up this morning and pried the offending brick up and scrapped away the bedding mortar...

I promised myself I would not be this OCD and I am 1 day into mason work resetting brick that are not "perfect".

Yes, the precast flue gallery is rather nice. It is a shame that I will most likely be covering it with part of the house structure. The entry on these ovens is roughly the same dimensions HxW but a bit shorter than the FB plans I think. My stone clad enclosure plans call for a decorative arch in front of the oven arch. At least that is what I modeled in Fusion360.

[UtahBeehiver]

Been there, done that. I had to strive for tight 1/16" joints when I did my build 10 years just to see if I could do it. Now, I tell builders, just make the inside the dome joints tight and let mortar be your friend. I have seen the cast vent of your oven and it is very nice with clean lines.

[BeanAnimal]

The kit is bricks - very well packaged and extremely well documented. I honestly can't say enough positive about the experience to do it justice. The process and final result are almost identical to the FB plans and community upgrades that have evolved since they were published. The only real difference is the pre-cast flue gallery. I will not need to build the transition from arch to chimney

I can't tell you how thrilled I am to not be actually cutting a few hundred bricks. I think you can see how I do things.. and if I were to cut the bricks, each brick would be custom fit for uniform mortar gaps. This saves me from going overboard - That is,10 years custom fitting bricks would have been fun. Today, it would make me grumpy.

[UtahBeehiver]

I can't recall, is your kit bricks or cast? Either way, yes, I'm still watching, just not have seen any fatal flaws to comment on. Keep documenting, it is a great resource for future builders.

[BeanAnimal]

I didn't get a lot done on the oven on Sunday.

I drove 30 miles to a Home Depot that stocks mason's lime.... In retrospect, I should have waited until today and sought out a local brick/mason supply.

Instead of jumping in and doing the floor - I decided to cleanup and organize the site for the masonry work. I setup a mixing table and storage container/holder for the open bags of materials (wheelbarrow with a tarp and bungies). This should make things easy to start and stop mason work each day without toting bags back and forth and getting setup and tearing down over and over.

Hopefully setting floor brick this afternoon.

[Jamie Dowdall]

Once I learned to browse this site from the search screen so posts show up descending chronologically regardless of thread, I found it much easier to follow the live builds. I think theres a lot of people viewing the forum but not necessarily knowing how to find the newest builds.

[BeanAnimal]

Thanks for the response. I hope it is a mission and not a slow motion train wreck! I am not so sure that I know what I am doing, but 20 years of planning has to count for something! Still amazes me how little gotchas can drastically change even the best of plans. Though, One could argue that the plan was not so great to begin with. Only snag so far is ground level, I listened to her and added a row of bloc to the foundation... so will have to deal with the final standing surface mess later.

i certainly paid a premium for somebody else gathering all of the materials and shipping them in one box, but other than that the kit has very few deviations from the plans/community upgrades and practices that have evolved over the last few years. One point of concern is the 6” flue and (what i:consider) a narrow flue gallery. That said, Ben has sold/built a lot of these and they appear to not soot up the front arch. Also, due to the timber frame this is going under, my chimney will be far taller than stock, so it should draw extremely well.

At this point i am still extremely happy that I am not chasing this stuff down and reading data sheets to see if some substitute alternative that is locally available will work.also glad to not be driving around hauling supplies. Curious to see how the 2 part mortar in the kit works. I used heatstop on a fire pit several years ago and found it finicky with a very short pot life life. I hope this stuff has a better feel.

[Jamie Dowdall]

I'm here following along. I'm new and dont have advice to offer, but I appreciate the time you're putting in to document and share your progress.

[JRPizza]

Hey, we are all still here. In general if you aren't asking questions and nobody sees you doing something that is a mistake things will be quiet except for the occasional "looking good" posts. You are a man on a mission and seem to know what you are doing so I for one am just sitting back and watching your progress. Will be interesting to see how your kit comes together. I had briefly considered doing some kind of kit but convinced myself that with building a base and finishing the oven a kit would not have saved me much time. I was probably partially correct but as you say there is lots of brick cutting getting to the stage where you have a dome and chimney built.

[BeanAnimal]

There does not appear to a lot of interest in these projects anymore. These forums are awfully quiet compared to what they used to be. I guess 1000 ovens later and interest has waned. I will continue posting progress simply for the sake of finishing what I started.

I was able to set the 2” CalSil floor insulation this morning. The oven slab is dead nuts flat, but the boards did not sit perfectly flat. It appears a few of the pieces are slightly warped. I used a bit of sand to support a few of the small gaps.



I left 8 inches in front to support the landing that will end up being roughly 12” deep. I hope this is not too deep, but no turning back now.


Once everything was centered, I poured a 1” layer of castable refractory cement for added thermal mass. The floor brick are only 2” thick. I debated adding an extra 1” of CalSil and 1” of thermal mass, but opted out due to slow materials availability.

I used a metal screed after the initial 2x4 rough screed and was a bit obsessed with FLAT. I don’t want to fiddle with lipage issues with the the floor tiles.


Hopefully starting the floor brick tomorrow!