Damn thats a shame, your early prep work was looking great, looks like the locals made a real mess of your plans. It's just another example of them knowing best. I think the other thing with these builds that unless you employ a real mason who know whats he's doing, the care and attention to detail can not be matched by anyone other than yourself.
I know from your early posts that your approach to perfection will likely result in you ripping the oven down and started from where you left off. Aesthetics aside, it remains to be seen how the oven will perform once you get back here and start to fire. Its a nervous time knowing that we haven't used the best mortar materials for the job. My oven has so far held up to a number of pretty strong fires and cooks. Besides the cracks in the wet refractory mortar that appeared in some joints, it doesn't look like things have gotten any worse so I live in hope that I will get some use of of the oven for a few years at least. I'm still not getting the heat retention results as others on the forum have recorded but I'm putting it down to it being a new oven that is currently without a door, and perhaps I need to work on my fire management skills. With all that aside, I'm sure the oven will function as I need it to and the work in progress continues with fun.
SvH has been really helpful with a number of issues, learning from his experiences. I finished my outer arch and chimney area with the home brew, lime supplied by Sven and other materials were sourced locally. I used standard kiln clay for that part as I couldn't source and powdered clay, which would be much easier to use I'm sure. I am not sure that using brick dust instead of clay is a recommended idea. I thought I had read that the properties of clay help with the expansion/contraction of joints as the oven heats and cools....might be worth asking an expert on this though.
The home brew is far easier to work with than the wet refractory. If anything, should you have to re-build, you will have peace in the knowledge that your finished oven will have been built alongside the guidelines of tried and tested methods used here on this forum.
As Sven mentioned above, humidity here can be a killer. Even a protected oven dome is likely to get damp. I will add a vent at the top of the oven allowing steam to escape should moisture work its way in. Take a look at this link here from Gulf - Vent Info. With this I plan to fire the oven fairly frequently to fight off moisture. The beauty about these ovens is that their cooking ability is so versatile and many other foods can be cooked other than pizza. Yesterday I fired it for an about an hour, let the fire burn out then cooked 4 hour roast pork belly and roast veg in there, it came out way better than what our kitchen oven has delivered in the past. The point being....I'm thinking that small frequent fires could help to protect the oven whilst making good use of the heat at the same time.
On top of that we are working on getting a roof and surrounding shelter to protect it, and of course during the really heavy monsoon we have here in Hua Hun (Sept/Oct) I will just wrap the thing up as best I can.
Regarding wood - I've asked around a number of Italian restaurants here in HH and in Bangkok what wood they are using. All are saying Mai Son (Thai Pine). Sven does have a good point on this wood, it burns through very fast and perhaps doesn't burn off as much heat as another wood would

Again, Sven gave some good advice on sourcing wood. As above sourcing from a local tree surgeon and the drying it sounds like a good option. My problem here is, that unlike Sven, I don't have a massive warehouse to store and dry the stuff. I'd also be a little unsure of how suitable certain types of wood be for the oven. I tried eucalyptus at first but later read that that it contained too much oil that isn;t good for these ovens. Another option Sven gave was to source wood from wooden pallet manufacturers. I'm yet to source any this way but it does look like some wooden pallet manufacturers import hardwoods for their purpose and these would be great for burning in our ovens depending on the price of course.
Wish you luck going forward.
Danny.
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