New Project in Lancs

[underpendle]

Hi All,
I have read with interest many of your posts. While I am still at the site preparation stage at the moment(the state of this site it may take a while!) I can't help but mull over design ideas at the same time.
I am planning on building a dome oven hopefully to bake bread as well as pizza etc. I enjoy making bread at home now. 
I sure I will bore you with assorted questions over the coming months and will try and keep a photo diary to make this a little more meaningful. 

A question to start off if I may. I would be interested in your views on the relative merits or otherwise of a hearth laid within the first dome course as opposed to laying the dome directly on the hearth? If laid within and on sand I can see that at some point a damaged brick would be easier to remove, but are there any other points I'm missing?

Regards

Simon

[downunderdave]

You are correct in pointing out the difficulty of replacing a brick that's under the dome wall. However if any floor brick needs replacing it's going to be in the centre. The main advantage of building the dome over the floor is that you don't have to be precise with your cuts for the floor bricks, because they will be hidden by the dome insulation. In fact scoring them and cutting them with a hammer and bolster is really quick.

[underpendle]

Thanks Dave.
As I thoght. What are you views on dry or wet bedding the hearth?

[downunderdave]

Can do either. If you make it wet it will set up like mortar and make removal of a floor brick more difficult later. That's hardly a problem because if you've used fire bricks for the floor it is vey unlikely that you'd need to replace any and even if one did crack so what, there are cracks between the bricks anyway what's one more?