New fella

[Francois]

ok -- i am still in the planning stage.. but have a few questions already...
1) Is there any mortar between the floor and the first "ring", because on most of the pictures it looks like there are not.
2) What is "stucco mesh"?? Is it the same as chicken wire??
3) would it be possible to build a chimeny with normal clay bricks?? Instead of using a "pipe"??

[texassourdough]

Hi Francois!

My oven is not brick so I can't specifically address your first question other to say that I am confident that it has been done both ways and that it shouldn't make much difference. Without experience with brick I tend to think it might be better to not have mortar but I leave that to others.

Chicken wire works fine. There are other meshes commercially available for stucco but mine is chicken wire.

And yes you can build a chimney with bricks but it is easier and much faster to make the flue using chimney pipe (mine is red ceramic).

Welcome aboard and good luck!
Jay

[NanyukiTom]

Hi Francois,

Greetings from Kenya.

I used a very thin mortar between the first course and the floor. It seemed to work OK.

I used chicken wire (1/2 inch holes) to hold the vermiculite insulation in place and to give the stucco covering something to bind to. It seemed to work OK.

I used regular bricks (three holes in the middle) for the chimney with no liner and that also seems to work OK.

Cheers,

Tom T

[Les]

Kenya!! Don't mean to hi jack this thread - James, you seeing this? We need a pool. I bet that within 5 years, this forum will be represented by 95% of the planet! Incredible...

Les...

[Neil2]

You can probably skip the chicken wire.

I did, and makes it a lot easier to construct. Mine is holding up fine.

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

welcome to the club,

i also used 1/2 inch chicken wire,

also very thin mortar under the bricks

and i used fire brick for my chimney, only because i had enough bricks left over for it

[dusty]

Welcome Francois!

I just wanted to chime in here, not because of chicken wire or brick chimneys, but because I believe stongly that there should be no mortar between the edge of the floor and the soldier course. In fact, I believe there should be a small space (expantion joint) between them. At the time of my build it was recomended that a strip of cardboard should be placed around the floor and the soldier course build outside of that. When you are done, most of the cardboard can be lifted out of the gap. If some gets mortared in, and can't be removed, the heat of the oven will certainly burn it out.

The idea was that this small gap will allow the floor to expand without cracking the dome. Mine has probably filled with ash, but ash will compress during expantion - mortar won't.

Hope this makes some sense and helps. Enjoy your build.

dusty