Ack

[egalecki]

This winter has been very hard on my poor oven. I have developed some largeish cracks in the outside- I can't get close enough right now to see how bad the inside is, but I suspect they're external, not in the dome itself. When it thaws a bit, how should I fix them?

My first thought is to use my angle grinder to widen them a bit, and then use the quikwall (I think it's what George used) over the whole thing. And then maybe paint it on top of that. I'm sure it's the wet- we had an unbelievably wet summer and fall, and on top of that an insane amount of snow (for here, anyway) with brutal cold (for here, again). I'm guessing water got in and then expanded when it froze and cracked it, since they look a whole lot worse since the beginning of the month, when we had temps in the low teens for over a week.

Does this seem like a workable plan to get rid of them and keep them from coming back? Until this winter I had really no external cracks to speak of.

[Jed]

Re: Ack

Hi Elizabeth,

I can't comment on your proposed fix to the cracking, but can report my results with a similar situation.

I used sort of a lousy mix for my stucco, and had a bunch of hairline cracks almost immediately after installing the final coat. After a few weeks of 'cure' time, I mixed up another small batch of the stucco, and worked the patch material into the developing cracks. And then gave the full dome a couple coats of a clear water sealant for concrete.

The results at this point (most of the way through our second winter) is the cracks continue to open and close. I have come back once to try in fill the developing cracks with more 'patch' material (same mix as the original stucco, only a bit more fluid).

I am not fully satisfied with the end result. From the sounds of your proposed fix, I would think you could expect a better result (ie, you plug the cracks, and they stay closed). I don't worry to much about our oven as we live in a place that doesn't get much precipitation, on the order of 12 inches a year, and lots of sunshine to help keep things dry. And I'm sure ya'll get more wet than that! So for the near term I'll just continue to fill the cracks a bit and then coat with the water sealant. I expect at some time in the future I'll need to do a more serious rebuild or upgrade, so will be interested in what you decide to do and the results,

Hope you can get back to cooking in the oven soon!

JED