Re: Price and Availability !!

Posted by Shayne

In Reply to: Price and Availability !! posted by Rimmel

Hi Rimmel,
I know this is a few months after your posting...

I am building an igloo type dome oven at the moment and sourced all my materials from Ian Mears at 'Mears Refractories' in Bibra Lake. His details are in the Perth yellow pages under 'refractory supplies'. He's a really helpful bloke, has built the odd oven or two and is pretty flexible about turning up to his warehouse at those odd times when you have run out of firebricks and have a bloody expensive hire brick-saw sitting idle! He sells Firebricks (price negotiable if paying cash), airset refractory mortar, coolcast castable refractory concrete, insulation board (to go under hearth bricks) and fibre cement blanket for insulating.

Regarding cost, the materials cost for the oven alone (not counting base) is about $700 plus a further $300 for brick-saw hire. My dome has an inside diameter 100cm and is 500cm high. Igloo ovens are considerably more expensive than tunnel to build, primarily there is a lot more brick wastage. For longevity to build a dome properly you need to use half bricks (ie each whole brick is cut in half) and then the bricks need to be cut tapered so you don't have ever expanding triangle shaped mortar gaps between the bricks as you get to the apex of the dome. This could mean up to three to four days of bricksaw hire.

My suggestion, build a tunnel it will be done in half the time with two thirds the bricks and only one days bricksaw hire. Estimated cost $600.