{"id":29,"date":"2015-02-08T03:22:59","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T03:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appliedecology.com.au\/coboven\/?page_id=29"},"modified":"2015-03-08T02:52:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-08T02:52:41","slug":"step-3-the-base","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/appliedecology.com.au\/coboven\/how-to-build\/step-3-the-base\/","title":{"rendered":"Step 3. The Base"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Filling<\/a>
Filling the base up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The base is what you put your cob oven on top of. \u00a0This can be anything from bricks to a flat top truck (yes mobile<\/em> wood-fired ovens do exist!). \u00a0We decided to make ours out of found materials and so made it quite rustic using boulders of sandstone to build a dry wall and fill with urbanite.<\/p>\n

What is a stone dry wall.<\/strong> \u00a0Kind of exactly what it says – a wall made out of stone with no mortar. \u00a0Big rocks or boulders are gently and carefully placed on top of each other and arranged in such a way that slowly and steadily a strong wall is built. \u00a0It’s a very very old method and conjures up old county lanes. \u00a0 \u00a0So we did that but round. \u00a0 \u00a0The hollow part in the middle we filled with urbanite.<\/p>\n

Building the stone wall to a certain dimension will of course determine how big your oven will end up being. \u00a0We read in quite a few places during our research the best shape is something like an avocado – not perfectly round. \u00a0The slightly smaller end is towards the door and the oven is more oval than round. \u00a0 Having said all that ours ended up being pretty near round and cooks beautifully. \u00a0As we said – we aren’t the experts here, so you’d be advised to read up a bit more about this if you are after perfection. \u00a0If you are after ‘pretty good’ – then somewhere between round and oval is a good place to start.<\/p>\n

What is urbanite<\/strong>. \u00a0It’s broken concrete, sand,\u00a0junk essentially that is solid and fills it up. \u00a0 If you look around you’ll get the feel for the height. \u00a0Probably about hip height. \u00a0Remember that on top of it you will put layer of cob, glass bottles, more cob. \u00a0Then your firebricks. \u00a0The firebricks are the floor of you oven – so around bench top height is where you want to end up. \u00a0 Work back from that.<\/p>\n

So – once you’ve built your stone wall to your preferred height and you’ve filled it up with stuff you then need to fill up the gaps with sand. \u00a0Lots of sand.<\/p>\n

Once it’s all filled up, you flatten out your sand to get ready to put your first cob layer on. \u00a0That’s in the next step. \u00a0\n\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t