Oven Build Part One

Before I start to make the oven itself I looked around the internet on various websites, and borrowed a couple of books for information on pizza and bread ovens. (I shall put links at the bottom of this post.)
Original I had wanted to make a brick oven, but due to the temperatures reached inside such ovens, firebricks are required as others bricks would not be able to stand the heat and may crack or even explode. Firebricks are rather expensive so I had to look around for alternatives.
Fortunately for me, not far from where I live a land-share project were building an Earth oven, and looking for volunteers to help out. Having found earth ovens as an alternative to brick in me research I thought helping to make one, would make, building my own far easier. Much of my build was based on what I learned while helping at the land-share.

On with my construction, the picture in the top right is of the base I built for my oven to stand on, as I hope to use the oven more than once, having the oven raised off the ground will make it easier to use. I nailed together some bits of old planks to form a box, placed it where I wanted my oven to be, and leveled the ground around it so that my oven would also sit level. I filled the box with a layer of rocks and sand (about a third of the way up) then placed a plastic sheet down (to minimize moisture rising up from the ground) and then filled to the top of the box with earth, the box stands about 70cm high and 150cm by 100cm. Obviously you do not have to build a base, or you can make it out of other things, this was the best option for me, though it did mean I had to shift about a tonne of earth. I finished the box off with a light covering of sand ready for the next stage

The second step was putting down the base of the oven, the area where the fire is and the food is cooked. Again, ideally firebricks would be used for this, for the size of my oven, I would have needed about 30ish which was a lot more than I was willing to spend. Luckily my grandfather came across some blocks from old storage heaters, hopefully they will work. I also used 3 clay house bricks for the entrance to the oven.

In the picture to the left you can see that I bedded the clay bricks straight on to the sand, and the storage heater blocks, I bedded on a concrete of sorts to raise them to the height of the clay bricks. The concrete was a mixture of sand, Mendip dust (fine limestone chipping/dust from local quarries), cement and hydrated lime (the lime adds some heat resistance to the concrete)

The base when finished measured about 70cm by 70cm excluding the clay bricks. I brushed a dry mixture of hydrated lime and soft sand in the gaps between my blocks, I left my oven base to harden for a few days before I continued with the next stage.

Links:
"Build Your Own Earth Oven"(Book everyone recommends to people looking to build and earth oven(Amazon))
Greg's Earth Oven (One of the first sites I came across)

Traditional Oven.com (Lots of useful info about wood burning ovens, tips on cooking and other such things)

I did have more but I cannot find them right now, I will add more later.