Milestone reached, Hearth poured

[KCJones]

Reached a major milestone this weekend, I was able to frame and pour the Hearth. I used 120 ft of rebar, 22 80# bags of concrete, 16 cf of perlite and 180# Portland. Rented a mixer from HD for the concrete (recommended). Finished the concrete pour in less than 2 hours with help from my wonderful wife. After a short break (rain) mixed the perlcrete in the babies pool (note to self, buy a new pool... I poked a hole in it with the rake ). Finished the perlcrete in 1 1/2 hours (weird stuff). The Perlcrete has set up nicely when I watered it down Monday afternoon. The weather is in the high 80's this week, so I will keep the crete moist and wait until Wed or Thurs to take the forms off.

[CanuckJim]

KC,

Nice, clean job. Keep going like that and your oven will be a thing of beauty. Just try to keep repeating the mantra: it's not a race, slow and careful.

Jim

[swripley]

KC,

Good work. Particularly helpful photo of the perlcrete/portland cement mixture. It is indeed weird stuff. When I poured mine I thought I had messed up for sure and that there was no way it was going to be structurally sound. Keep up the good work. As Jim says, slow and steady. I entering week 10 and just now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sharon

[DrakeRemoray]

Congratulations!

We have sure had some crazy rain the last week or two...torrential by Colorado standards.

What is that you have going on in the corner of the hearth?

Drake

[KCJones]

Thanks all for the kind and encouraging words. I have a 4 inch ss flue pipe in the front right corner. I'm going to build a Carolina pit BBQ on the right wing of the oven. I'll tie the pit chimney into the ovens chimney so I will only have 1 smoke stack emerging from the gable. The back left I have electrical conduit for lighting. I do like pizza's at night!

[asudavew]

Your dome work is looking really good!

Keep it up.

[BaconGrease]

Originally Posted by KCJones

I'm going to build a Carolina pit BBQ on the right wing of the oven.

That is a great idea. I thought at first you were going to pipe smoke into the oven and use it as a smoker, (which also would be interesting)

[christo]

Or perhaps to pipe the smoke from the oven to the smoker....

[toolman]

Excellent work KC!

I look forward to seeing your progress.

I like the idea of the wiring conduit in the hearth for the light. What type of light are you going to use?

Dave

[KCJones]

I'll let the "Lead Foreman" aka wife decide on the style of the lights. We are going for the Tuscan look and feel for the whole set up. The lighting will probably be something along the lines of lanterns (or manybe not!).

I'll post more pictures lateer of my progress, I have the floor done and 7 courses on the dome complete. I havn't used a form it yet. I'm going to use one now. I stole my wife's exercise ball and going to give it a go.