Category Archives: Alternative Building
Cob Oven Lessons
It’s a good time to summarize what we learnt from our cob building project, while it’s still fresh in my mind. Overall, it went pretty well; but there are a couple of things I’d do differently next time around. Give … Continue reading
Gabion Bench
We haven’t tired of gabions yet; and the oven project gave us confidence to try some other structures. When we needed a small retaining wall at the back of the kitchen patio we decided to build a gabion bench that … Continue reading
First Bread and a Meltdown
A major milestone achieved: we baked our first bread in the cob oven. As was to be expected, we can’t control the temperature very well yet and the oven was a bit too hot when we loaded the loaves. But … Continue reading
Oven Update
I haven’t posted about our cob oven project in a while. You’d think we’d be done by now, but you’d be mistaken. The basic structure is complete – in fact we baked our first batch of pizzas two weeks ago. … Continue reading
Building a Cob Oven–Part VI
The sunny spell continues – but it’s highly unusual for mid-september so we had better get our oven done quickly before the rains set in. Today we achieved a big milestone by completing the basic structure: we finished the insulation … Continue reading