Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

[Karangi Dude]

This great build thread has been restored with the permission of Karangi Dude. Many of the oven building innovations and techniques that are used commonly today, originated with this build.


Utahbeehiver and Gulf


Karangi is a little village in the hinterland of Coffs Harbour (Mid North Coast) NSW Australia
I live on a small property with my wife and daughter
I had studied WFO for a few years then decided to build an oven
After twelve months of research and a couple of months planning it was time to make a start

I joined this forum to share my adventure along with my knowledge and experience with fire and food
I hope you enjoy reading this thread and viewing the pictures of my build and that there is something of interest in the posts that follow

Cheers Doug

Karangi Dude

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[cobblerdave]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

welcome onboard
Glad to see your still around remember you from JAS post talking about bricks from Dimore.... must be sept/oct sometime...
my Bros family live in coffs know what the floods can do to the main center bet ya insurance premiums are murder
keep posting your progress there a great bunch here and will support and help

regards dave

[Karangi Dude]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven


Thanks Dave,

The pier that we had to take down held up a beam that just happened to join over the pier so we had to plate it up on boath sides with gal plate and bolts it held up well when we took away the Acroh props did not drop a mm.
Hear is a pic of the Little Wife in action she is not backwards when it comes to hard work ( notice the chinese work boots )

[Karangi Dude]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven


Cutting out old concrete is not made easy when it is full of mesh. I think they must have used a truck load of concrete for the base of the pier it was that hard I think it was half cement for it to be that strong. Anyway it is out now and boxed up ready to pour. The size is 1800 x 2000 x 150 deap it will take some filling.

[Karangi Dude]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven


Started the pour Sunday morning the Little Lady was up in Brisbane visiting a rally in Brisbane Hospital and thought I could get it done by myself. Picked up a trailor 7x5 load of dry mix already had 4 bags of cement and set up the mixer. Half the slab was in the shade the other in the sun so I had to vary the moisture content as I went. May be I should have waited untill the Little Lady came home to help, it took twenty odd loads to fill up and half way through I ran out of steam and thought I may not finish berfore it starts to go off but I rallied enough strength and got it finished. The pour was 2 solid hours and then more to screed it off. Now I am ready to start laying blocks hopefully this weekend but I will need to put a cover up to keep the rain off as it is our rainy season .

[cobblerdave]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

I think it would be safe to say now that you fully committed?........even got the " minister of war and finance " on the end of a sledge hammer...I'm impressed

Regards Dave

[nissanneill]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

I can see a potential problem raising it's ugly head not too far down the track!
With a 48" or 1200mm oven planned, there will be quite significant increase in bricks and weight sitting on that slab, especially on the outer edges ----right?
I personally would have dug a beam footing around the perimeter and put a few extra reinforcing rods in there to take the load.
All is not lost though, I would use 2 courses of brick for the build-up and fill the void with F62 mesh and vibrated concrete as a 3" vertical slab OR fill your Besser blocks (or as the AS members call them cinder blocks) with concrete for the extra strength that will be needed.

Cheers.

Neill

[Karangi Dude]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

Hey Neill,
Thanks for your comment; my slab, I used heavier mesh than normal and poured a bit over 150mm of concrete. I am planning on core filling all the blocks and using 12mm Rebar as well. The base will also have a full wall down the centre to help distribute the extra weight. I will post pic's as I go.
Cheers Doug

[nissanneill]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

Good to see that you are addressing the potential problem.
With your planned improvements, it should stand the test of time.

Neill

[Karangi Dude]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

Put up the shade sale to keek out some of the rain lucky! it rained on and off all weekend but still I got a few rows of the base down

[Karangi Dude]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

82 full blocks and 4 half blocks and finaly finished (those blocks don't get any lighter)now ready to core fill and form up for the suspended slab.

[OscarA]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

Looking good. I'm watching with great interest.

[cobblerdave]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Ovent

Building one of these pizza ovens is a lot like building a house:-
When you get the slab done you think to yourself.... yep that looks about right
Then you get the walls up the thing suddenly looks....well, thats looking a bit bigger than I first thought....
Then you get the roof on you suddenly discover Heh...... thats Bloody huge!!
Mate I'll be watching ya built this one a 42' ovens quite big but a 48" is really big can't say I heard of one....perhaps I'll check the commercial builds

regards dave

[Karangi Dude]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

Hey OscarA and Dave,
Thanks for your interest in my build, that's what makes this "Forum" so good.
1200mm or 47 1/4inch is not really that much bigger than a 1100 or (43 1/4) 42inch. The stand is only 200mm longer and 200mm wider than the most common size of 42inch. Anway we have decided to go a little larger than normal as we will be catering for a good number of peolple, and we are considering may be setting up our place as B&B.
We have access to lots of wood and we intend to use the WFO to cook a lot of our meals as well as smoking meats drying fruit and vegetables (that we grow on our property) may be Beef Jerky and of course baking bread, cakes etc. and lots of slow cooked meat and poultry. You may have noticed the stand is a little different to norm but I didn't want the whole base for strorage I only wanted a small area for wood so I made 2 wood boxes 600wx800d they will be easy to clean and who knows what sort of critters can get in the in the large open style stands. I have ran a wall down the middle of the stand it will serve 2 purposes 1 as a back to the wood boxes and 2 to split the the weight of the oven and enclosure. Also the wood boxes are on the side where they can easily be filled with a wheel barrow and out of sight, I don't like the look of half filled messy looking wood boxes. Even though the stand is larger than normal with the wall down the middle the supporting slab only has a span of 600mm. I bent over 900mm lengths of rebar then set them in place before core filling. The second pic is a rough layout of the rebar.
Cheers Doug

[Karangi Dude]

Re: Karangi Dude's 48inch Oven

Formed up rebar tied down and ready to box up for the slab, which will be about 110mm thick. I hope to pour the slab on Monday, as I finish work for the year tomorrow and have a friend arriving from Melbourne on Saturday to spend Xmas with us, he does not know that I have this little job for him. If we can get it poured on Monday it can cure over Xmas. Hopfully the bricks, motar and Insulation will arrive before Xmas may be tomorrow even. (Apart from the cost of the bricks, insulation bricks and insulation blanket the freight from Sydney to Coffs Harbour alone is $314.) Anyway I can be ready to start the insulating layer and dome some time just after Xmas. I will have to wait though untill my Daughter from Melbourne goes home on the 30th Dec as I will want to spend as much time with her as possible before she heads home, we only see each other once or twice per year.