Hello From West Africa (Materials Questions!!)

[CaptDoug]

Hi All,
I have been surfing the web for plans and such in order to build an oven when we return to the US from our current assignment in Nigeria.
But I am about to sign for anouther 2 years here (Hoping the US economy kicks in a little more by then).

So thought I would build one here as a test. Now the problem comes in on Materials - Being so close to the equator there are not many fireplaces nor any Home Depot type businesses.

So...I am not sure any of the fancy insulators you all mention are availible (certinly not under the names used here) - I dont even know where I would find fire bricks....

Any suggestions?

Best Regards,
Douglas
Posting from Nigeria - West Africa

[Janine M. LeGrand]

Hi Doug,
I built a WFO here in Uganda (East Africa) using locally available materials. Somewhere in this forum were all my initial stumblings in getting started--it was a post titled "Hello from Uganda" I believe. I actually ended up with a great oven getting a ton of use; actually by now I need to do a little maintanance on it as some of the mud has been breaking off and a brick in the archway is loose, but I expected to do minor ongoing repairs. My oven sits on a round "table" of brick and cement but the actual oven is made from locally made bricks, termite mud plus grass stems and sand. You could save a lot of money by making a cheaper "table" with mud, bricks and rubble if you don't need wood storage space below the oven---actually the design I am working on now for a friend. In my case, I don't have an indoor oven so I use the WFO a lot and love it. One hint on materials--don't try to use cement where the oven gets hot. Mud will bake and get hard so you don't need cement, and cement gets crumbly with high heat. For insulation I use "adobe"--mud mixed with a LOT of straw (or in my case leftover grass stems uneaten by my goats). To make a form to build the oven dome, I used wet sand and dug it out after the oven was hard.

--Janine