Solid clay bricks were used instead of firebricks

G’day Rado and other oven builders or all oven chefs out there.

I’ve been using my oven for several years now and love it. I do pizza parties more than anything else, but love to do a slow roast after a lunch time pizza party. It’s great to let the oven do a slow roasted joint of lamb then fire it back up for a huge batch of baked spuds. My whole family with mum dad three siblings and all kids comes to 23 people so they take some feeding and the oven makes it a breeze. Everyone who sees it can’t believe that I built it because it is so good! I’m an engineer who sits at a desk all day. My neighbors loved the project. I had a willing helper almost every day I worked on it. I want to make bread in it one day but have had a few busy years with my growing family (kids are 6, 4 and 3 years old) so one day I’ll get around to it.

Aerial image of my place:

I used a house style clay solid brick that is homogeneous instead of fire bricks. The detail photo below would be a good one to show people on your site. It shows the grain of the internal brick with the important feature that there isn’t a different type of clay in the middle.

Used end of lot bricks for the project:

I rang around a number of local suppliers until I found one that could get them for me. They were an ‘end of lot’ so I got them real cheap. I think I asked you about them at the time and you were pretty sure they would do the job. I bought one pallet of standard house bricks for the outer shell and I used Hebel aerated concrete blocks for the plinth.

They have been up to extremely high temperature (oven full of bright red coals for hours on end) and look as good as the day I finished the oven. I was able to get the decorative red bricks and pavers for the outer shell from a local yard that were left overs too.

My material costs were about $1300 from memory and several hundred of that was for the nice textured paint I used on the outside to make it match my pergola. It is totally possible to push this total price furthermore down if I sourced more of any left over material from various advertisements during my weekends.

I went looking for my CD the other day and could not find it. I only have my hard copy of the images I printed out on paper. Not sure if you keep the records but I posted you $30 at the time cos your site is awesome. I was wondering if I could download the plans files now because I can’t find my CD? I can send you a photo of me cooking up a storm in my MTO mark2 if you like!

I only have pics of the first stage on me here right now, up to just before I build the outer shell and chimney, and obviously photos of it finished too. I’m sure I have more I just can’t find them amongst all of the baby photos from that era. As you know I built the oven during 2009.

I will be moving to a new house in about four years time, so I will build a new oven then, and I can’t wait. Many people ask me “how could you leave your oven behind?” and I tell them “because I get to build another one!”

First I finished screening in my back patio. I built the wall out of Hebel and bought the aluminium rails/posts etc. and built that bit too. Not bad for an electrical engineer eh? The oven became the very next project. I couldn’t wait to start building it. The oven was built to the right of the back patio as on the pictures. I did modify the design so that the ash went into a steel bin instead of a hose out drain. Great CD’s and I consider the website a bonus!

King Regards,
Grant from New South Wales in Australia.