Building our Pizza Oven - Part 3

With the concrete slabs complete, I moved onto building the base that the oven will sit on. The oven weighs over half a tonne so it has to be pretty substantial construction. Bessa blocks are certainly man enough for the job so I laid the blocks for the base over a Saturday. The base is a H shaped structure with the middle part designed to take most of the weight of the oven.




Here is the base complete with the form work and reinforcing for the top slab.

Once the base was complete I then had to cast the slab onto which the pizza oven will sit. This is probably the most risky part of the build as this slab spans the supports so has to support both it's own weight (several hundred kilos) and the weight of the oven. Thick reinforcing mesh and concrete give me a nice flat sturdy surface to work on. This will need to cure for a few days to that the concrete develops its full strength so next weekend I can start building the oven.

And finally with the shuttering removed and the slab cured it can at least take my weight and the weight of a glass of wine.  Next week we find out if it will take the weight of the full oven.

We are just a few weeks away from wood fired pizzas at home.

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Location:Bobbin Head Road,North Turramurra,Australia

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Our First Eggs

The girls have come of age. Yesterday morning we woke up to a lovely surprise, our chickens who have just reached 24 weeks laid their first eggs, not just one or two but 5! We didn't check the nesting box on Friday so it looks like the first eggs were laid on Friday.

It is a great feeling knowing that most of the eggs we eat from now on will have been laid at home. Scrambled eggs for breakfast this morning!

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