Davids WFO build

[dabstar]

I finally started my project after lurking here for the past 6-8 months.

Unfortunately, I live in an apartment in Copenhagen, Denmark so I am building the oven in my parents backyard. It is a 10 minute drive.

This weekend we started the digging for a foundation slab. We are aiming to build 42"/106cm diamter Igloo style oven.

The building site before:


The completed hole:


Next step is to find cheap material. It seems expensive to me to buy concrete ready-mix so I am looking into being Portland Cement and a truckload of gravel for mixing. I assume that I can use this for both my foundation slab, filling the cores of my block stand and pouring the bottompart of my hearth.

Wish me luck in my build. I'm sure that I'll have a ton of questions once I get going

David

[John K]

Welcome David and good luck with the build

[DaveW]

Sounds good. Don't forget the sand in your concrete mix. I tried hand mixing and while possible it is a real effort. In the U.S. you can find electric mixers fairly cheap. Well worth it.

Good Luck and have fun,
Dave

[dabstar]

Thanks for your comments.

I will most definitely be renting a mixer for the day. It is quite cheap (equivalent of $25) to rent a 200lbs mixer.

Here in Denmark you can get a sand and gravel mix that is specifically made for mixing concrete and this is what I intend to buy.

Any thoughts on how much I would require? I am thinking 150kgs/330lbs of cement and 6 times that in sand/gravel-mix for my 82"x68" foundation-slab. I am making the slab 20cm/8" thick. Is a 1:6 ratio mix alright? I have seen ratios from 1:3 to 1:8 and am not really sure what I need for these purposes?

As for quantities, are there any rules of thumb on how much is required to fill block-stand cores?

[dabstar]

After a couple of weeks of business travelling, sourcing materials and a suprisingly cold and wet spring. My oven build finally continued. I rented a mixer for the weekend (a long holiday weekend with monday off) and started work.

On saturday we poured the foundation slab for the oven. 4½ 25 kg bags of cement and approx. 0.7 m3 later we have aching backs and tired arms.

[dabstar]

this weekend was a rough one. Saturday we poured the foundation slab and today a holiday monday we built our stand out of foundation blocks.

First we laid out the first course on the dry slab.


Since our slab was already hard we decided to create a light mortar/concrete with cement, sand and small pebbles. We then placed our first row of blocks in the mortar, making sure everything was straight and level.


Next we stacked four rows of blocks, overlapping the corners. It was fairly hard cutting the blocks. We tried using an angle cutter, a chisel and lots of brute force and managed to do something that will do the trick.


cont'd

[dabstar]

cont'd

We soon realized that 4 rows would probably be too high. It would render the ovenfloor at around 110 cm (43 inches). We all agreed that this would be too high and decided to remove the top row and make it 90 cm (36 inches) high instead.


We continued by filling concrete in every other core and rebar in most of the concrete cores as well.


We also filled the corners by pouring in concrete with a board as a barrier. It worked like a charm.


And after 6-7 hours we were finally done.

[trezno]

Hi David

I would like to build an oven one day - also here in Denmark. How are your build progressing, and where have you found your materials, especially the firebricks and insulating materials?

Ulrik

[Coloradoredusa]

Hi .. I am building my WFO also!









http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f6/d...ght-17606.html (Dome height)

[trezno]

I am mainly looking for information on sourcing materials in Europe. It seems that most of the oven builds on this forum are in the USA, so I am looking for some builds in Europe and preferably in Denmark or northern Germany :-)