Hello from Virginia

[gjbingham]

Ken,
I thought someone posted about getting it for 35 -40 bucks a bag awhile back. I might be wrong.

[thebadger]

I just picked up 3 bags of heat stop 50 for about $79 a bag in Cincinnati.

FYI - I'm planning on making a 5-6 vermiculite/portland insulating layer for the hearth... for the added height and floor insulation.

Dick

[egalecki]

Hmm. The local concrete products supplier quoted me 62.00 a bag. It's looking like I might need to grab a couple of bags and the bricks at 1.19, since nothing seems to be getting less expensive these days.

If I buy it now, how long can you store the heatstop without it getting hard? Not planning to put this off unnecessarily long, but since I need my husband's help with the concrete, I may have to wait a bit. I will also have some work to do soon at my inlaw's new house under construction. Hey, maybe I can talk my mother in law into an oven, then I can guinea pig on hers??? (not likely, the new house is at the golf course and the covenants are sort of designed to make it look as though no one actually lives there, I think)

No matter what, I know that if I wait too long, we'll actually be back at real work (construction business is a bit slow right now, thank goodness for alternative income sources!) at some point, and I really want to get it finished before that happens. although when it does, I'll be too tired every night to use it...

[gjbingham]

I'm working from memory and not experience here - Make sure you get the Heat Stop 50, which is a unmixed powder. I think the pre-mixed pails are not water tolerant, and the stuff gets goopy again when it gets wet.

Anyone/everyone - please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

[egalecki]

For Frances:

Of course I have managed to post them in reverse order, but I did manage to get them to be smaller when you click on them. I think. I have lovely black walnut, locust and some chinese chestnut in there. What do you all use in your ovens?

[Frances]

Cool!

I use beech - most firewood is beech around here.

Are those nice red bricks for the oven, too?

[egalecki]

Actually those are surrounding one of my raised garden beds. They're leftovers from building our house. My darling son, who will no doubt make a much better psychologist than mason, made the wall for me.

In 4 hours, my husband has now split ALL that wood. We're on the way to get some pallets to put it on and get a tarp to cover it.

I've figured out where to locate my foundation, and this afternoon I will have to pot up the plants that live there now. Forced garden renewal.

[egalecki]

So yesterday I found a supplier for a lot of stuff locally, although it still looks like I will get the blanket from Forno. They want two arms and two legs for it here. The man I spoke to, though, was the first person not to think I was crazy.

I made a trip to our barn of leftover construction materials, and lo and behold I have several precast lintels, a couple of 12" corner blocks, and a few 8" blocks. I can get "ugly" 12" blocks from the concrete guys for 1.20 per block. I don't know how much reg. 8's are, but they don't have any uglies of those. So, can I mix sizes? Have any of you done that? Is the reason for the 8" block so you don't have such a big web to fill, or is it some other reason?

I'm a little worried about the height of my cooking floor- how high did some of yours end up? I'm 5'4", and I can see that the drawing shows 41" to the top of the hearth. If I use board on top of that (4", if I don't do perlcrete) and then the bricks themselves, that's pushing 4 feet. I'd rather not feel like I did when my practice husband mounted the microwave at 5 feet to the bottom.

Can the board insulation be set into the hearth concrete itself? Or one layer of it? If I did that, should I be setting it into perlcrete or will it be ok with the regular?

[vincent]

i'm pretty sure that George is correct about the Heat Stop 50. The pre mixed pails are not for water exposure

[dmun]

12 inch blocks are sort of overkill, but if the price is right, go for it.