Materials List For My Oven

Includes materials to build the foundation slab, block base, and oven:

Oven Itself:
220 Fire bricks (I have about 30 left, but many are damaged)
3 50lb buckets of refractory mortar
2 bags of portland cement (I used 1.5)
1 bag of fireclay
50 sq ft (1 box) 1" ceramic insulation blanket (8lb)
2 pieces 2" thick ceramic insulation board
36" simpson class-a flue w/ base & cap
1 tube liquid nails
1 tube furnace cement
Misc screws, anchors, wire, etc.

Block Base:
39 8x8x16 block
4 8x8x8 block
3 bond beam block (for lintel)
5 bags mortar (3 for block mortar, 2 for stucco scratch & brown coats)
1 bag (4 cubic feet) vermiculite (for dome insulation)
50 bags of ready mix (6 bags were left over)
6 #4 bar
2 pieces 10 Ga 8x8 welded wire mesh (slab reinf)

Concrete Forms:
24' of 2x6
1 4x8 sheet of 3/4 plywood
4 12' 2x4 for shoring

Mistakes I Made

The oven is basically done, but if I were to do it again, here are some things I would change:

1. I should have shaped the cooking floor to fit the plan of the dome more accurately.  I laid it down without cutting many bricks thinking everything would be hidden by insulation.  Later, I went back and cut the overhanging bits off with masonry saw.  The hanging over bits made insulating the dome more difficult later.  The floor bricks need to be cut to fit the base template very accurately.
2. Insulation.  The rigid insulation has a butt-seam with the ceramic blanket just above where the cooking floor meets the base of the dome.  It would have been better to overlap this transition by at least 2 inches.  I get some heat loss at this seam.
3. I would add additional insulation to the floor.  3-4" of lightweight concrete or 2" more of ceramic board.  The underside of the slab gets up to 100° overnight.
4. I put aluminum foil in as a vapor barrier, but I think I put it in the wrong place.  I did brick, foil, insulation, vermiculite-concrete, stucco.  I think the foil would be better served between the insulation and vermiculite-concrete, where it would inhibit water penetration into the insulation, and be insulated from the hot brick
5. I would make the opening for the under-oven storage area as big as possible.  The wing-walls and the lintel do little structurally, and limit the under-oven storage capacity unnecessarily.  The lintel reinforcement could have been incorporated in the slab, and I would at a minimum, reduce the wall width to 12" on each side (it's 16" now) -- or eliminate them and make the base a U shape.  That would give me more room to store wood.  I also think that making the base H-shaped in plan could be interesting.  The openings of the base could point to the sides, or front and back, providing lots of wood storage space.
   
6. Finally, the floor of my storage area is too low and fills with a water that seeps in when it rains.  I plan to fix this issue by adding about 3/4" of concrete, sloped at 1/4" per foot toward the front to provide drainage.  I have since fixed this :)

Snow on the Mountains

Today was the first day without rain since last Saturday.  We've had about 6.5" of rain (that's a lot for LA).  Next weekend the forecast is for more rain, so it looks like I will need to hold off my next bake for another week.

The upside is the bay window in the living room framed a vista dominated by beautiful snowy mountains this morning.  

Rushed Dough

Despite forgetting to feed the levain the night before, pizza turned out pretty good last night. Because the levain wasn't ready in the morning, I had to compress the entire dough making timeline. 

Going short on Levain

Finally found a day to invite my neighbors over for pizza: Today.

However, I was out all last night and got home late and.... forgot to feed the starter and take it out of the fridge!!

Dome Done.

Tuesday morning I finished the second (and possibly last) stucco coat on the dome. So except for the stucco color coat, the dome is done, and I no longer need to leave a blue tarp over it every day.

Getting the stucco to make a dome shape was fairly easy -- surprisingly!