Curing my oven

[Jason79]

So the dome has been finished for about two weeks I have I just framed it in. I framed in the walls with bricks and then filled the in tire area with insulating cement I know this cement takes a long time to dry how long should I wait until I do my curing fires and would doing more really small fire earlier speed up the curing process or should I just wait the 27 days then do the first fires thanks jason

[david s]

If it were mine I wouldn't be waiting 27 days, a week should do, but maybe it depends on what mortar you used.

[dmun]

27 days? I think that's extreme. You filled the entire enclosure with vermiculite concrete? If that's the case you have a LOT of water to dry out. After a week I'd start with the small fires to get all that water out of there. Some users have used space heaters to keep the oven hot but not boiling to accomplish the same thing.

[david s]

For insulating concrete the mixture is around 35% water, by volume. You can do your calculation, but think how long it would take to boil dry a drum of the same amount of water, a long time. As it is in an enclosure sun and wind are unlikely to assist you in removing that water so you'll have to do it with fires. Suggest you leave the roof off your enclosure, if you can, while you dry it out. This is the reason most folk put the insulation in an enclosure dry, so you have less water removal problems.