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How to build a clay oven

14 July 2022 by Eileen

If you have a field or a garden you can build a very useful clay oven. It is a fairly common type of furnace that can be used to make a home construction with recycled materials at a low cost. It works pretty well in terms of heat retention and cooks pretty well. You can even build it by reusing the stones and bricks found in your garden without having to hire a waste clearance service for them, as they will have a function.

How to build a clay oven

Measures that should have a clay oven

For the construction of this type of oven, we must consider the amount of food that we can cook at the same time. If we are talking about making family meals, it should at least have the capacity to fit about 3 pizzas at a time. Standard measurements used in this oven They are about 50 centimetres in radius as 3 pizzas fit here quite comfortably.

The door must be designed taking as a reference the containers that will be placed inside the oven. In this way, we will tell you the width of the containers in question and we will make the door a little wider to be able to place and remove these materials without any problem. Many people recommend that this entrance be rounded to avoid heat loss, but this problem can be avoided by using a door that closes well.

Materials for the construction of the floor and vault are quite a few and cheap, so they do not generate additional costs. For the floor, we need to put some full or medium bricks, but they are completely clean. We can use the dimensions for the base of about 1.40 square meters and it will take about 120 whole bricks.

For the vault, we will need to use about 160 medium bricks. It is necessary to have some basic materials such as a crowbar to be able to mix and dose the mud, a mason’s spoon to be able to place the mud, a bubble level so that the level is accurate, a compass and a thread that is the same diameter as the length of which we will build the oven. It is advisable to ask a blacksmith for a welding machine to be able to build the frame to the measurements of the door. This is the most complicated part to visit that can be facilitated by a friend who will give you a better aesthetic finish.

Clay from the kiln

In this case, the cement we will use is clay. For that we need to get clean, light and if possible black soil to start the installation. If the soil is black, we will guarantee that it has good properties to stick to the bricks. We need approximately an amount of 1 square meter of soil to make the base, the vault and the furnace plaster. Also, it is necessary to have horse manure in a burlap bag.

The best way to start mixing everything is to make a kind of well with a wide mouth. Here we will put some nylon liners or put the soil to be able to make the mud. If we pass the soil through some kind of screen, we can make the mixture easier to mix and avoid the rest of the stones or dirt that may be there. The most recommended ratio is to use a quarter of a bucket of compost for every two 10-gallon buckets. Horse manure is 80% soil and 20% manure. The consistency that the mixture should take is more or less that of mashed potato.

Earth

The floor we need to build for the clay oven must have 3 levels. The first level we are going to build is building the thermal base. We will use bricks and we can make a formwork using irons to make a square fabric with dimensions 30x 30cm. This part is left more to the creativity of the builder. There are only a few aspects to consider, such as the weight the base must support, based on what will be cooked often.

For the second level, we will have to cover the base of the already laid bricks with mud. For the third level, we will repeat the second stage, but with the possibility of placing a brick cord around the perimeter of the base and placing a quantity of coarse salt mixed with ground glass to give it greater stability. It is important to monitor the level on each of the floors so that the point is set correctly.

Clay oven vault

For the vault, we need the base to be fully assembled and levelled. We will nail a compass and mark the entire perimeter of the oven taking into account the width that the door will have. We will use a location of the furnace where we need to monitor the wind regime to place the door on the other side, where we will be more comfortable to work.

Disclosure: This is a featured post.

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Hello!

Welcome to ET Speaks From Home!
I'm Eileen, a proud mum of two teenagers (aged 17 and 16), my daughter is living with visual impairment. Since launching this blog in May 2012, we’ve continued to grow and evolve, sharing our family’s journey and passions.

I love cooking, crafting, DIY projects, writing about Chinese culture, and creating YouTube reviews.

**Achievements & Recognition:**

* Top 20 UK Parent Blogs (2020)
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* Tots100 Top Mummy Vloggers (2015)
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* Shortlisted for BritMums Brilliance in Blogging Awards (BiBs), Video Category (2014) Read More…

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