Carol Clark

Hi, thanks very much for your advice. I've looked at the fire bricks here in NZ and the closest to us are $48 each for a 230x115x40mm brick. No second hand bricks locally as yet.
The cob floor isn't actually our idea and have attached a photo of part of the article. I'm hoping to email the author if I can find their contact details to see if he has revised his opinion over the six years since the article came out. I'm mainly interested if anyone has actually tried a cob floor.
Cheers,

Thanks, I'll have a look but we won't use fire bricks as they are too expensive.
Cheers,

Hi, we are in the process of building an outdoor cob pizza oven. We are not planning to buy fire bricks for the base (hearth) of the oven but are going to use old fireplace red bricks. Recently in an article I read they suggest cob for the floor. That would be without straw in it. I guess it would be easy to repair, seamless, and smooth but we wouldn't want sand in our pizza bases.
Has anyone tried this?
Thanks,
Graham

Dan Hatfield Ii wrote:Hi Carol,
I'm in zone 10a in Oz. I'm currently building a brick 6" heater.
Excuse the mess. I'm in clean up stage at the moment.
Once it dries out and I can re-seal any cracking in the mortar,
it will be rendered in a lime plaster and I have a granite slab for the
bench, bell and feed ready to be applied.
I think this style would suit a green house well.
You could use the bench (or benches) above ground or below soil level.
Another method could be to use earthenware pipe under the soil.
If it hasn't been mentioned...metal pipe will rust out quickly and a cob bench
will likely detroiate quickly in a moist greenhouse environment so brick,concrete will suit the job better.
happy to help or even build.
Thanks
Dan

Hi Dan, thanks for your reply and handy tips. Your heater looks very neat. I think we will use aspects of your design and info for ours. Still at the planning and collecting stage so will keep you posted.
Regards,
Carol

Thanks for your reply. I would love to be able to grow ginger!
We are planning to build a 6 inch J tube heater but we are still very much in the planning stages.
We are inland from Oamaru in North Otago
Cheers
Carol

Thanks for the cooker idea, the house is a fair distance away but will give that some thought.
Wow that's a decent snowfall. We are pretty temperate here and snow isn't that common. About 5cm is about the most we'd get at at time and nothing some years. I don't think the almost nonexistent pitch on our roof will be an ìssue. May add some extra timber and bracing if it is.
The greenhouse is really to extend the season a bit and  let us grow tomatoes peppers cucumber basil etc which are marginal outside
Thanks for the ideas and photos. It's great to see what other people are up to ☺
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Thanks that sounds great.  We are up to putting the raised beds into the greenhouse so will arrange a space for the heater and possibly work on placing pipes under the soil of at least one of the beds. The greenhouse itself is made of recycled wooden frame windows. I'll try to send a picture. Might look at retrofitting double glazing at some stage too but that's another thread ...
Thanks for your help

Hi everyone we are in the south of New Zealand and with help from woofers have built a 6m x 2.3m x2m high greenhouse. Very pleased to have found Permies and a huge wealth of information.
We're wanting to put a RMH in for heating in the winter and found the  brilliant book by Erica and Ernie Wisner.
Our concern is the amount of time required to stoke the fire before night fall. Would it need pretty much constant attention for two or three hours as we fear or could we come back and forth every so often until it gets up to temperature?
Any help/comments much appreciated
Carol
☺