The Base - Earth Oven Part 4

Although we had some cob bricks made we had nowhere to put them!

I had dug out an area and filled it with hardcore but as I knew the oven would weigh a fair bit I decided to use some concrete here - hopefully the only bit. I lined the bottom of the footing with some left over plastic from our polytunnel and made a frame out of some left over fencing timber from earlier in the year. 

A few loads of concrete later and I had a fairly good base to build things up from. 

When this had dried we moved all the earth bricks we had made over and started building a wall around the outside. 

I managed to get the children involved, the boy loved getting the sharp sand out of the trailer! 

This is a seriously fun material to use. It doesn't dry out your hands (in fact mine have never been so soft) and it's simple enough a five year old can do it. 

I tried to make sure we kept level and square as we work our way up the base. 

My eldest bringing me straw for the cob thinking she's Laura Ingalls...

My middlest adding water to the clay, called slaking, so we can leave it over night and it mixes much easier the next day. 

So far so good. We've all got involved and it's a fun material to work with. It is a huge amount of work though and I can see why most of the other earth ovens I've seen are built up on rocks or bricks. It has meant that I've really got to grips with the material though. 

The next stage is to infill the middle and start looking at adding some of the layers that will make a difference to the oven.