It’s got to the time of the year when the garden is low on productivity and the chickens can free range and clear up the parasites that have dug themselves into the top soil.
They’re obviously enjoying themselves
And its time to empty the compost heaps onto the beds so I was very pleased to see this in the first one I turned.
Wooden doors burn. Metal ones don’t.
So… Biscuit tins
Did the job, hardly any burning, hotter pizza oven much quicker than normal!
A bit of a dream of mine was to get a bus and stick a pizza oven on it touring festivals etc serving good pizza. But I’ve been pipped to the post by the crust conductor. I first became aware of them last year when my work colleague asked about pizza oven construction and mentioned his sister had one that needed a bit of finishing.
It took a while to go visit, but finally we had a free weekend and they’d just reopened after the Christmas break. As we walked on board we were hit by the smell of wood smoke and pizza from the oven – I was quite surprised by the setup as well. As you can see there were no complaints about the pizza of the chance to sit behind the wheel.
The real bonus of visiting them in Peckham is the brick brewery adjacent to the bus.
Great pizza and beer – all weathers in the bus but I really see it taking off in the summer in the outdoor seating area.
Last year at the bushmoot I was intending to build an earth pizza oven. As the area is built on sand dunes, sand was not going to be a problem. Clay on the other hand was. I ended up walking to the river, digging and finding… sand! So this time I came prepared with some readily dug clay and some from a local potter.
We dug in a load of sand from literally next to the tarp. Two young girls did most of the work, the rest of us mucked in only when the camera was showing!
For the base, we used wooden logs – these were chopped from a timber pile. About 3ft long, they were notched so they wouldn’t roll. We used a tarp to stop the sand running through the bottles onto the floor. We laid bottles, then tucked the tarp over the bottles and layered sand over the tarp to both hold it in place and give us a firm bed for the fire bricks. We then built the sand form over the top.
Sand form getting there. All done with eye.
Layered a copy of the metro over the top and wetted ready for the oven clay mix.
Clay being built up around the form. This was done quite quickly and inside you could see the cracks where it wasn’t bonded quite as well as it could be.
Smack the finished dome with a big stick.
Straw dipped in clay slip and layered on. Door is cut.
Add another layer of clay with added straw for stability over the top – just a thin layer.
Add decoration and immediately light!
Used an arrow as a blow pipe
The front did dip a little, but still worked fine 🙂
Oddly my shed roof had lost its roofing material. It could have been all these winds, but based on the fact it was ripped to shreds by lots of sharp claws, I’m guessing it has something to do with the four legged creatures in the house using it to get on the roof. Perhaps I need to use something tougher.
There was enough felt left over to do the roof of the pizza oven. I’m worried because I don’t think the lime render is sticking very well at the moment has developed a lot of cracks – this may be due to the damp seeping in. Hopefully this’ll have sorted that problem out now!
Had a chance to put on a couple of layers of lime white wash over the dome. I’m really very surprised it came out so white as the first application was pretty much see-through. The 2nd application was less of a surprise (Even though it too was see-through) but I was pleased at quite how white it’s come out. Now just waiting for a free weekend for Tiff to come back and paint him!
Tiff came over to do the artwork on the lime render. It was a shame we lost so much with the lime render covering the mud render, but I think it looks just as good if not better! Now chunks of the egg rise out of the dome.
I also got a chance to render the base. It’ll look a lot better when white washed and painted!
The lime render should keep the water off and allow the water vapour inside to permeate and escape minimising the risk of the dome collapsing.
Three days of digging, sand shuffling and sculpting is done. Read more to see the results!
After about 2hrs in the oven at 50’C they’re starting to dry. You can see that the 100% clay has already started to crack badly.
How do you know you’ve got the best wife ever? Well, when you come home, eat dinner and then announce “I need to go into the garden and make mud bricks!” rather than putting your son to bed. She calmly accepts this and even let’s you bake them gently in the oven.
I’ve made a 100% clay brick, 50%, 45%, 42.5%, 40%, 35%, 30% & 25%. Mixed it thoroughly. Read more for the calculations
I'm Tim, a 31yr old ex-Allotmenteer. My wife and I used to have a small 5 rod plot in South Essex where we grew all manner of veg. I'm also involved in brewing the odd keg of beer.
When getting down the allotment got too hard and our circumstances changed we bought a house with a 65ftx30ft garden, which we're converting into a mini orchard and veg beds.
We get up to some weird and wonderful projects - we've built a small boat, a pig roaster (powered by a windscreen wiper), a chicken run, raised beds and try our hands at all sorts of stuff getting us closer to being 'self sufficientish'.
The hope is to introduce chickens soon and hopefully let them free range during the day.
If you want to contact me, you can do so here