The Second Pour

So the day after christmas, bright and early, my body working on a good head cold, the Concrete Man came again.
He rolled up the driveway looked at the sight and then decided to head back down the driveway and back up. This is harrowing, if you know the driveway and the general size of a cement truck.
He unfolded the spout and pulled a few levers and lumpy wet concrete began to plop grotesquely into the pit like so much elephant dung. My dad and I hoed it into place and The Man helped out with a shovel. Eventually it was full, overfull really, and The Man and I screeded it into place, that is we took a 2x4 and layed it atop the edges of the frame and sawed it back and forth while pulling it from one end to the other. This pushed the larger aggregate (gravel) down and pulled the more liquidy components to the top leaving a smooth surface. The man pulled up onto the driveway where he cleaned out the truck (leaving us a nice patch of concrete) while I used a small float (a hand tool that is basically a 5"x12" piece of sheet metal with a handle) to make the edges, that is, the only part that will not be under more block and brick, even smoother. As we cleaned off the tools it began to drizzle so we put a piece of heavy duty plastic over the fresh slab. This had the unfortunate effect of leaving a strange lined finish on the slab from the creases in the plastic. Oh well. I will include pictures when I am home next.

The first pour

For some reason when the people came to pour the concrete for the foundation they brought not quite enough. i think this is because the trenches (the part of the excavation that extends down 24") ended up being deeper and wider than anticipated. So right now we have a below grade slab but they will come back and pour more until it is just above grade.
You can also see in the above picture what a mess has been made of the lawn already. It is beginning to feel like a construction zone.


Today My dad and I built the frame for pouring the remainder of the concrete out of old 2"x6"s and set up the 6x6 reinforcing mesh on top of bits of broken brick. I think this slab will be ridiculously strong since the frost walls are 6" deeper than they have to be and the slab itslef is going to be something like 10" thick. Which is good because there is going to be a whole lot of brick on top of it.

Foundation Plans

My father is an architect or, more specifically, a Preservation Consultant and Architectural Historian. He is doing a little side work for someone who has a backhoe and they have worked out a trade. My dad will do this work for him and he will excavate the remainder of the trenches for the foundation slabs. I should also make it clear that my dad is building a shed concurrently with this oven project so this guy is going to take care of the excavation of both sites which are approximately 20 feet apart.

Perhaps you are thinking "but Mark, you already dug up the sod" Yes but while the general thickness of the slab will be about 6" of steel reinforced concrete, the perimeter must extend down below the frost line to prevent the thing from heaving. In this neck of the woods that means 24" which isn't too bad. (in colder climates it can be 4 feet or more.) I tried to do it by hand but after about 14" the clay soil was so tightly packed (and still relatively dry from the summer and fall drought) that it was too difficult.

So this guy is going to come in, dig out the trenches and then we're going to get the concrete folks to come by and pour in the concrete and this same guy is going to finish the concrete (make it smooth). What a bargain!

All that is scheduled to happen on the 10th.

I also contacted Alan Scott today to procure plans for building the oven. Once I get paid, he gets paid and I get some plans.
Check out his website if you want to see what these things look like.
Also see Bohemian Bread's site, a baker in Vermont who publishes a lot of very useful information including pictures of the construction of his own oven.

The building will progress in stages. The Schedule looks more or less like this:
December: Pour Foundation Slab
January: Build foundation walls
February: Pour Hearth Slab
March: Lay bricks for Hearth floor and walls
April: Build vault of oven ceiling.
May: Build exterior walls and pour cladding (the thick layer of refactory concrete that retains the heat)
June: Fill with insulation and cap
July: Finish work (exterior decorative brick etc..)
August: I should have me a bread oven!

What thishere blog is all about:

So I am trucking, as you may know from reading my other blog, in order to make money to pay off the misery of credit card and student loan debt and to make money to build a brick oven which will be the base for my bread baking business. This blog will be a chronicle of the building of that oven and bakery and business. Mostly there will be a lot of pictures of holes in the ground and bricks and concrete and big messes but hopefuly there will be pictures of friends and hard work and, at the end, fire and beautiful breads.
Today was a good day. Today the ground was broken. This had been put off for a long time because it had been so dry and the dirt was like concrete, not appreciating the fact that we wanted to dig it up and cover it with concrete. In the last weeks there have been a few good rains and so today my dad and I marked out the spot for the bakery building and the oven. and I removed the sod from the area where the slab for the oven will be poured. The oven will be a direct fired "Alan Scott" style Roman or Black oven with a 4'x6' hearth. Essentially the way these ovens work is you light a fire in them and let it burn for a long time and then remove all the coals and ash. At this point a great ammount of heat has been stored in the brick and concrete mass of the oven and it is with that retained heat that you can bake bread for many hours. Alan Scott is a guy from California who studied and improved the design of these ovens and builds them for people but also sells plans on his website
http://www.ovencrafters.net
Here are some pictures from todays work. (sod is Heavy. especially when it is full of recent rain and largely clay, as the dirt around here is.

The sod half dug up












the sod is gone!












my dad wanted me to take this sod and build a little berm to keep water from going down the hill in this area. He is peculiar like this.