Newby Questions on Construction

[SpringJim]

Cool, soapstone in flavors!

[John_IN_The_OC]

RE: "Once that's done, you would coat the dome with the adobe mixture." That's a good idea.. THANKS

I talked to a couple of clay companies and most do not seem to screen for leads and other heavy metals. Anyone know of one that does?

[dmun]

If you are talking about potter's clay, it's a product that has one and almost only one market - schools. If a company were selling a product to schools for kids to shape with their hands that had serious heavy metal contamination, there would be hell to pay. It may, in fact, be why the stuff is so expensive, liability and testing.

So here's the deal: you have a soapstone dome, and since soapstone is pretty thin, you are going to have some kind of refractory coating over that. Then, your are going to have at least one, maybe two kinds of insulation over that. Then, your adobe, which is unfired dried mud, to the best of my understanding. And, since you don't want that to wash away in a puddle, you are going to have some kind of serious stucco, or enclosure over that.

Since the stucco layer is completely happy going directly over the insulation layer, I don't get what the adobe layer is for.

In any event, your clay layer is going to be almost perfectly encapsulated. Any contaminant short of depleted uranium should be perfectly harmless.

[John_IN_The_OC]

RE"Hmmm.... or have you got an existing adobe oven which you want to clad with soap stone internally?" NOPE just starting...<pondering>