Brick laying tutorial

I've watch a mountain of youtube vids on the subject but today I stop at a new house where there was brickies and explained what i was doing, they were really happy to give me 10mins to explain some of my questions and give me the basic important concepts.

1) MAKE SURE your first layer is PERFECT, spend the time on that and the rest is easy, if you are wako on the first layer then the whole thing will be.

Slab finally laid

Well finally laid the slab, I have video as well which i will upload next week and update here with the links.

This week its the first bricks going down.

MY youtube

I've finally setup my youtube channel so you can follow the videos of the project as well.

http://www.youtube.com/user/freepizzaoven

and the first one is it there.

tim

Clay paver myth busted !

After MUCH debate about whether a clay paver is suitable as a base for the oven i've decided to test it myself. some say they will explode some say its fine. The only common thing is "do not use pavers with holes through them".

So I thought I'd do an experiment and fire up a paver in my BBQ to see how it went, I'm going to bore you with as much info as i can think of so i give you as much as possible.

the date is 21/7/9 and in melbourne i purchased a 400mm sq by 50mm deep red clay paver from bunnings which cost @ $5, the temperature outside is @ 15 C and I have a 3 burner BBQ which i have taken the plates out of so i can sit the paver right on the burners, actually it sits @ 3 cms above which is perfect i think, the 2 burners completely cover the paver in flame and flame goes around the sides as well.

I put it on full crank then place the hotplates on top of the paver and they sit @ 3cm above the paver, which is perfect i think. i leave some space to the side of the plates to allow oxygen in and out, plus i close the lid.

I have my bbq's thermostat and also i place a temp gauge right on top of the paver, the bbq thermostat reaches 230C but the one inside reaches its maximum of 315C quickly and can't go any higher so I think it got up to 350C ++

I then left it like that for 5 hours !!! , there was no noise, no cracking sounds and then I let it cool down, I also didn't do any pre heating of the paver I just went straight to HIGH.

Heres some photos:

this is the clay paver cooled down, you can see the temp gauge, during the experiment the hot plate was more closed and the grid on th eright actaully has a solid plate under it to maximise heat retention.

Here is the paver turned upside down to show you the effect of the flame on it, the dark bits are just carbon and can be easily removed with a brush, you can see the lighter "hot spots" of the gas rows.

Here you can see the gas burners, you can also see the edge that i sat the paver on and the higher edge that the hotplates went on. You can see the paver really looks untouched by the heat it was subjected to.

In conclusion I will be using these pavers for the base of my pizza oven, of course you should stay tuned to see what happens in real life but I think it should be fine.

computer generated view

just had to put this in as its very well done, not my design but interesting none the least

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPLhyBijgoY&feature=related

Beware of Spiders !!

The local councils twice a year let you throw ANYTHING onto the road side and they will take it away for you, this is a GREAT time to gather items, to day I went out with a hammer and a cordless drill, I found a bed base that I pulled apart to get the slats and some good wood for the buffet bar i'm building, probably about $40 worth of wood if i bought it, I also found an old oven and took the back off it to gather the insulation which can be reused on the pizza oven, but be careful as you never know where this stuff has been sitting, the owner might have had it in the backyard for months just waiting for this day to throw it out, I opened the back cover and put it next to the oven it was still in my way so i went to move it and the BIGGEST red back spider (google it) i have EVER seen was crawling at my fingers !! I throw it down and squashed it as a bite from that would put you in hospital !! and I have seen hundreds of these from living up in Queensland, didn't think they lived down in Victoria?
http://museumvictoria.com.au/spiders/detail.aspx?pid=11

so tommorrow I'm wearing gloves !!!

New roof

Its been a bit slow going as other things have go in my way but finally setup the new extended roof to cover the whole area, the site is ready for the concrete slabs now so that should happen this month !!

heres a recap: