Mud Oven: Building the Base
The biggest issue with the mud oven so far has been how to construct its base. Ideally you want the oven door near your waist, for easy loading and unloading, but how do you build a platform solid enough and insulated enough to do that? (And cheaply enough, I might add.) The Mud Oven builder's bible suggests making a form and filling it up with broken concrete, and that's what we plan to do.
Philip and Danny came over to help dig a spot for it in early July. We had to dig down about 3 feet to pull out an old antenna which was sitting in the perfect spot for our oven, and then we filled up much of that hole with gravel. Next we laid out paving stones that I'd collected to make a firm, flat base. We let that sit for a week or so and in that time had the biggest rainstorm in Toronto's history, and I'm happy to report that everything stayed level, nothing sank. Which means our eventual oven should stay nice and level over the years, too. (We hope.)
The process of making something stable - a platform to build on - is very interesting. Because one imagines that if it's rickety at the start, that ricketiness will only become projected at a greater scale later, as you start to build. And to achieve stability, you need to grind things (like rocks and gravel and earth) down to the appropriate size so those little bits act as a cushion and not a fulcrum. Too small, and they don't cushion; too big and they make everything wobble - a little pebble the size of a pea under your paving stone and you're screwed!
And you need to wait and let time do its settling thing, and then come back and make adjustments, if necessary. And you also need to know that you can't get too manic about equilibrium and stability, because after all it's only a mud oven you're building, and the ground will move slightly over time, and things will shift and things will crack and they can probably be patched up if that happens. And well, it's not equilibriated to get all out of whack over equilibrium.
All of that has been very interesting to work on and think about.
Philip and Danny came over to help dig a spot for it in early July. We had to dig down about 3 feet to pull out an old antenna which was sitting in the perfect spot for our oven, and then we filled up much of that hole with gravel. Next we laid out paving stones that I'd collected to make a firm, flat base. We let that sit for a week or so and in that time had the biggest rainstorm in Toronto's history, and I'm happy to report that everything stayed level, nothing sank. Which means our eventual oven should stay nice and level over the years, too. (We hope.)
The process of making something stable - a platform to build on - is very interesting. Because one imagines that if it's rickety at the start, that ricketiness will only become projected at a greater scale later, as you start to build. And to achieve stability, you need to grind things (like rocks and gravel and earth) down to the appropriate size so those little bits act as a cushion and not a fulcrum. Too small, and they don't cushion; too big and they make everything wobble - a little pebble the size of a pea under your paving stone and you're screwed!
And you need to wait and let time do its settling thing, and then come back and make adjustments, if necessary. And you also need to know that you can't get too manic about equilibrium and stability, because after all it's only a mud oven you're building, and the ground will move slightly over time, and things will shift and things will crack and they can probably be patched up if that happens. And well, it's not equilibriated to get all out of whack over equilibrium.
All of that has been very interesting to work on and think about.
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