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 Bread Oven: Part 2 Ground works

21 May 2018

The next stage was mostly cereberal, my original idea, when we lived at Catslide, had been to build a bread oven with integrated BBQ, medieval spit and firepit. This would have been far too big for our new domestic arrangements and I no longer had the Victorian firebricks that had been displaced when the bread oven at Catslide had been demolished by the previous owners.

What I did have was a supply of solid concrete building blocks, some from the walls around the workshop and some more that appeared whenever I tried to dig a hole at its back. So a bit of thinking was required.

  So a bit of thinking was required.

Why not put the blocks 'on end' and then the oven base on that? This was lower than most designs I had seen but was that such a difficulty? After all I have to kneel to put stuff in our house oven which is at floor level. Laid it all out and found that this worked easily and decided that I would put in some extra blocks internally with lintels to help support the base.

Made a cardboard template of the oven base just slightly smaller than the base plus one block width which still gave distance for the cement rendering and insulation but supporting the base all round.

  Made a cardboard template.

  Used the template to mark out the footing.

  Footing dug out and level pegs in place

  Mixed up concrete and filled to the peg tops.

27 May 2018

We now take a short break from bread oven work for the bank holiday weekend 'Smith' party.

  Gathering round for the birthday cakes.

  Showing off their new party clothes a party present from Andrew and Sonia.

  Breakfast cooked over the fire pit.