36" Oven in Romania

[bion]

Hello everyone,

My build was done 2 years ago (2020 summer).
It's not 100% finished yet, I still have to do some work (build a bottom wood front door for the log storage and apply stucco finish for protection on the exterior).

Here is the video showing the build process:

I followed this forum topics and the free Pompeii Oven specs found here and then adapted the build to my local materials.

Looking back it was an exhausting build (I'm an IT developer) but I'm happy with the result.

I tested the oven at high temperatures (required for pizza cooking) many times. There are not visible cracks in the oven structure.

This oven is the second one I ever built. First one was a cob oven following Kiko Denzer instructions from his "Build Your Own Earth Oven" book.
The earthen oven turned out to be very small and poor in floor insulation (probably I did something wrong during the build).
Video on how the cob oven was build:

PS - Please excuse the quality of my two videos.

Thank you!

[SableSprings]

Congrats Bion! Very few people have the experience of building a cobb oven, then moving to a brick oven. I taught IT at a community college here on Oregon and seriously considered doing the Kiko version way beyond my attention (and capability) span. With help from relatives, friends, and this forum I was able to build my brick oven and have thoroughly enjoyed using it for nearly 13 years. Good job on your build & thanks for the posting of your projects!

[bion]

Thank you, Mike!

The earthen oven was easy to build. I had a lot of fun with my 5 years old boy mixing the adobe using our feet.
What was hard was to procure a good quality clay from my region. The clay I used did not pass some basic strength tests I found on internet. But the straws mixed in the material helped a lot.
I encourage anyone building a cob oven.