OK I felt it was time for an update given it's been over 2 months since I've added some decent pictures.
I managed to finish the cladding and dry it out slowly... but not quite as slow as I'd originally planned (with candles) which looking back seems a hilariously crap idea. I lit about 10 small fires, starting with newspaper only (rolled up to burn a bit longer) culminating in about a 2-3 hour burn with softwood. At no point did I notice any steam coming from the oven so I was very happy with the rate at which it dried. Had my first pizza party and it went very well, although the same as everything you learn stuff to do differently the next time. I had the fire to the side and although it cooked pizzas OK it made it difficult to have more than 2 pizzas in at once, it also prevented the heating licking up the roof and over the pizzas so much.
Got a good blaze going (shown at the front of the oven to start with)
One of the first pizzas I made
Cooking, fire on the left of the oven.
A different pizza cooked (I ate the other one too quick because it was too tasty :twisted: )
Oven had a gazebo over it all winter, which occasionally meant it was quite smokey but the cover was appreciated.
New Year was celebrated in style, had a pizza party before the drinking games started. Lots of toppings on offer:
Me posing with the first pizza:
and everyone there wanted me to come and build them one, they loved it
Jump forward to 2012...
Oven now has a few inches of insulation(vermicrete) above the cladding (which is lopsided over the entrance arch but is evenly distributed over the main vault) - ignore the bricks inside the arch, they were there to act as a temporary door:
The gazebo managed to withstand the first week of crazy winds (albeit it blew over and had a few small bends in the metal), 2nd week of crazy week (maybe 3-4 weeks after the first lot) was the straw that broke the camels back. I came home from work to find the gazebo in pieces in the garden behind, so discarded the poles (some were snapped!) and retained the top for cover:
Starting to add a 2nd layer of insulation:
Final vermicrete - ~6-7 inches:
I haven't started on any more brickwork, in actual fact I've knocked the brickwork I did before down (well at least knocked the mortar loose) because I am going to be building a concrete countertop coming out of the side and to save bricks I will be using cheap house bricks rather than the reclaimed ones where the brickwork won't be visible. The format will be a concrete block inner that will be tied into the countertop with a reclaimed red brick skin to match the oven.
Getting a feel for the length and size:
Foundations dug... not being an engineer I'd rather have them too deep and too wide than not enough:
Managed to re-use most of the melamine board from the oven slabs, albeit it's not in the best shape having been outside for the best part of 3 months so it was difficult to get a straight edge, anyway that didn't matter as it would eventually be paved over anyway. All that was needed was it to be level.
And to compare to some of the pictures I added at the start of this build, here's a state of my garden (sorry I mean construction site) at the minute, all the materials for the oven are on the left, 3 raised beds being newly created to takeaway all the soil from the oven foundations, with 1 more that needs to be built to take the soil from the countertop ones.