Clay oven - Has anyone tried building one

[red-rialto]

I have been looking at sites on the web with a view to building a clay oven.Just wondered if anyone else has done this or has any ideas on this. I have a couple of links to pages that you might find interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1304795

http://heatkit.com/html/bakeoven.htm

[Chicken on the Hill]

Not thought about it, but articles looked interesting. A great addition to the outdoor kitchen. Being able to cook pizza and bread, or proper jacket spuds is great. And a source of heat on cold evenings.

[taff]

In my head I've been planning making one, I just never thought of making one out of mud bricks, but since the garden is clay, I might have a go at making some this year, to see if it's viable the next.

[Nellie]

I'd just love to build myself a brick oven - in fact, I'm sorely tempted to. Will perhaps spend the winter reading all those articles, so that I'm ready to go when the time comes.

Thanks for sharing your information.

[red-rialto]

Well I have cleared a bit of ground and will give it a go once the bad weather has passed,will post some pics of my attempt.
Think it will be another thing the neighbours moan about.
I really dont care,I heat my house for free and will soon be cooking al fresco for free,cant be bad.

[Nellie]

Great idea! Perhaps we should pencil a date in our diaries so we can come down and test it out with a pizza frenzy?

[kate egg]

How come you heat your house free? Do you collect logs in the wood for a wood burner?

Be interesting to read how the clay oven goes

[red-rialto]

Yes we collect logs for the wood burner.I put it in about 9 years ago but never used it much until last year. I bought it from machine mart for about £300. We collect logs,fallen trees and anything else wooden,even found an old pine bed in the park behind us that the local idiots had broken up in the kiddies play area. Collected it all up and had an evenings free heat.
It is installed in the living room and will heat the whole house if it is on all day. In the evenings we tend to pull up the sofa and shut the doors and just heat the living room.
We have electric shower so have done away with the gas central heating and hot water so far this year, and no one seems to have mentioned it or been bothered by the fact we dont have hot water on tap.
We also cook garlic bread and baked potatoes, baked beans and anything else that will fit on the top of the casing of the wood burner. Nut cutlets in baco foil cook really well as do veggie sausages etc.
You can find wood everywhere,our local shed manufacturer leaves all the off cuts at the front of his yard for collection everyday.
The only extra thing I had to buy was a chainsaw.
Bought a homelite from b&q for £59.99, uses very little petrol,and tyou can use old cooking oil to lubricate the chain rather than spend £6.99 on a litre of chainsaw oil.
I tend to spend a couple of hours on a saturday morning cutting up brances we have found and bagging it up and putting it in the shed.
I would rather do the collecting and cutting and bagging than pay the gas bill !!

[red-rialto]

this is the burner I have,they do others but I found these to be the cheapest I could find at the time

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/produ ... ing-stoves

[kate egg]

Sounds an excellent way to beat the price of gas and leccy right now. And you also warm yourself up collecting and chopping the wood

[liskeardjane]

I have seen these types of oven in french gardens and just assumed they used them like BBQs...oh I get it ....they are ovens!

[saint-spoon]

I wonder if the price of fuelling wood burners is going to escalate as more folk turn to them as a realistic alternative to fossil fuelled systems. Using off cuts and fallen logs is undoubtedly greener and more cost effective than buying fuel but will a surge in wood fuelled appliances mean that these supplies will be rapidly exhausted or at the very least will off cuts become a profitable side line rather than waste material free given?
There seems to have been a recent (and IMO very welcome) realisation that one persons rubbish is recyclable as a sellable commodity and certainly salvaged wood seems to be making a tidy sum for those disposed to collect it from willing benefactors; will those remnants deemed to small for reuse be bundled and sold by weight.