Benjamin Dinkel

Hi Ned,
I haven’t heard of that strict maintenance routine. If exposed to rain cob and adobe might need regular re plastering. Otherwise I can’t imagine why that would be necessary. And of course it would be much wiser to protect the cob from rain than to be constantly repairing the damage.
I live close to a 700 year old castle ruin made of rammed earth. I don’t think anyone re plastered  it since 1492. And the wall and tower still stand.

One of the main challenges would probably be the low energy density, as Anne was commenting. The following graph shows that quite obviously.

For the same energy you need almost 3 times the mass of wood compared to natural gas. On the other hand you're not bringing a pressurized container...

Hey Jeff,
the blue is from the garlic, absolutely harmless.
And as for the mold, it's hard to judge from afar. But I would go with my nose and tastebuds in any ferment. If it smells good, it's most probably good.
Maybe dispose the top inch and the covering leaf? And then just try some of it?

Hey Gerry,
mine works with just a roof tile on top, so I think there should be enough room for the exhaust to escape.

And as for the roof, it will be metal. I was thinking going through the roof, but that makes it much more complicated. With my tove the tree branch right above seems to be fine, it's not really hit exhaust. So I'm assuming the wood structure will be fine.

But of course we'll have an eye on it the first burns.

Because of the rain and the arch collapse we decided to continue building a roof:




And when the weather became better I redid the brick vault.





When taking the support out I was nervous, but this time it worked. And I decided to do the back of the oven with the chimney first.





The chimney is a regular pipe but coated in cob and with a traditional "hat".





Took out the front support and everything seemed stable.




So I closed the front of the oven.




Now I'll have to wait for a week without rain and apply 2 layers of lime and clay plaster to finish everything up.

Thanks Phil, Scott and Thomas.
I'll keep your comments and ideas in mind for the next one.
The thrust line is a helpful concept.
I was thinking of trying one with the bricks laying down. But it would make the base even bigger if I want to maintain the oven size.

Yeah, it was a couple of hours of unpaid labor in the end. Cleaning up and rebuilidng I obviously didn't charge.
But it was cool to be able to reuse the material, just soak and repeat.

My builder friend mentioned he thought the arch was very wide. It's basically a half circle. Do any of you have had bad experience with half circle brick arches?

Hey Lara,
can you specify what you mean by "on the ground"?

You want to build a rocket mass heater and use your floor as the mass? And you want to build the ducts from stone?

With the base ready I could start with the actual oven part. In the next photo you can see where the top of the riser ends under the future pizza stone and distrubutes the heat in the bottom of the oven.




The clients also wanted a kitchen counter next to the oven, something I'm missing with my oven.






At the same time I was building the brick cuppula.




And then the weather changed. It was raining all the time. So the day I wanted to continue with the front of the oven the cob and insulation (shiv and clay) wasn't really done yet.




Thankfully the counter wasn't damaged. I cleaned up, separated the materials and decided to wait for better weather.