Thermal Mass and Insulation

[Joe Campbell]

We poured the concrete cladding over the oven chamber Christmas day in 2007. If I remember, it was around 20, 80 pound bags of concrete. I used medium sized vermiculite as insulation and used 9 four cubic feet bags. The sides of the housing have about 5 to 6 inches of it from the cladding to the outside walls. The depth on top of the oven is a good 12 inches. If you look at my pictures, the insulation is poured even with the soffet line on the sides of the oven and mounded 2 or 3 inches deeper front to back in the middle.

The roof tiles are concrete tiles. I found them at a local building supply recycler. I paid a $1 a tile. Each tile is about 12" wide by 16" long. They cut easy with a cutout blade in a body grinder.

A little story about my oven. Since May of 2005 when we poured the patio and started the oven, I've lost 5 family members, including my brother who killed himself 3 days before Christmas in 2006. I almost started calling it the "oven of death"! Every time I started building.... someone died. Enough of the doom and gloom.

Labor day weekend of 2008 was the first "offical firing and baking" in the oven. This was 3 weeks after my wife's sister's husband passed away. We has about 20 friends and family here and had a great time. This spring I plan on having another big cookout with a group of my astronomy friends. Gastronomy and Astronomy! That will be a party!