Seeking Shelter From the Storm

As normal for late fall in southern Oregon, the serious rain was literally on the horizon. I figured I’d better get started on building some sort of sturdier, short term shelter for the oven as soon as possible. It was fairly obvious that the blue tarp, rope, bucket, and bags were really not the ticket for long term protection from the weather. Once again, my inexperience and lack of spatial concepts made for an interesting construction process of the temporary cover.

During the next break in the weather, I took the tarp off and started to build a frame for my temporary enclosure. Looking back on it now, I probably should have had a plan or at least asked somebody with some building experience for help...

I figured if I just put up four corner 2x4's and tied them together with sheet metal roofing on a top frame, and threw on some fiberglass insulation I had laying around, it would be “good enough”...apparently not...

After adding more side supports braced with angle brackets tacked into the hearth and plywood siding to stop the sway, it looked like my oven would be dry for the winter...again...apparently not...even half sheet trays diverting rain away from the gaps around the chimney brick and roofing.

It turned out that water would condense on the underside of the metal roofing at night and early morning. In fact it wasn't “just a few drops” it was almost like it rained underneath the roof onto the fiberglass insulation which just greedily soaked up the water. In less than a week, the fiberglass was literally dripping wet when I removed it to create temporary roof structure 2.0

Off came the roofing sheets and down went some plywood as a roof base. I covered the plywood top with Tyvek, and added flashing around the edges. I realized that I’d want something to keep water from dripping down the side of the chimney, so I incorporated flashing into the chimney as I built it up further. I also stepped the chimney bricks in to allow me to firmly set my chimney cap in place (instead of keeping it in place with the BBQ grill and nylon line...ouch!).

Next, I reattached the metal sheets and set them so the flashing embedded in the chimney would drip out onto the sheets and not down into the landing area. That system stopped the very successful internal drip system I had unintentionally created with version 1.0 and made for a reasonable oven shelter that lasted through the wet winter months.






So, here's my Hillbilly shelter for the oven going into the winter of 2009-2010. The empty cart bays in the oven's support base turned out to be a pretty good place to keep some of my stuff dry through the winter as well.

Exhausting Finish

Everyone deserves a good venting system...right? Details...Details...Not only do you have to think about keeping smoke out of your eyes while prepping for a bake, but also making sure any moisture that may have found its way into your oven's insulation has an escape route. One way is to place a vent plug that allows moisture to freely pass out of the dome's insulation through the outside render or facade. That can be as “country easy” as placing a short piece of pipe in place when you render/stucco the dome to provide air/moisture flow from the insulation out and then putting a cut-off beer can over the pipe as a rain cap. Much easier on the eye (and fashion world) would be to use a nice and shiny (and also inexpensive) Hydraulic Breather Cap at the top of the oven dome. Of course the easiest method is to incorporate both a smoke and moisture path through your chimney system.

Since my wife nixed the beer can vent, I decided to go with option three and allow moisture to escape through my chimney system. Since I had to transition from the curved surface of the dome to something level for my brick chimney facade, I decided to lay a piece of angle iron across dome at the back of the chimney box. By simply adding mortar on each side of the dome where the angle iron was laid, I got three support points...left, center, and right. After it was leveled and the mortar set, I made sure there were clear gaps underneath the angle iron for air/moisture to pass from the dome insulation into the chimney box. I then started laying bricks using the angle iron as the back base and built the chimney up a couple more chains. In the first picture, you can see the angle iron (circled in red) set across the back of the chimney box.




In the next picture, the angle iron is circled (1) and part of the vent gap into the chimney box is visible in the back (2). Since the excess angle iron was going to be covered by my final oven facade, I didn't worry too much about looks at this point.

















I had borrowed a tent/canopy from our neighbors to protect the oven from the incoming fall and winter storm(s) while I continued to work on the chimney system. However, I came home one afternoon to find the canopy had been blown up and over the fence into the neighboring field.

I pulled out my trusty blue tarp (mentally thanking our County for not making it illegal to use...since it's considered a visual blight on the planet by many) and tied it down over the oven. Hopefully it would last until I could put a more solid, temporary enclosure in place. Looked like progress on the chimney system would be extremely slow to non-existent for the next couple of months (as would baking). In addition, I had read on the Forno Bravo forum that you could get significant water through the oven opening, so a bucket and an empty perlite bag were put into use. The chimney cap that I’d gotten was too big for just the 8" clay flue liner at this point, so I placed the round grill from my Weber BBQ over the liner to give the cap a place to sit while keeping water from coming down the flue. (Again, please consider it was getting stormy and dark while I was scrambling to create a “water resistant” enclosure.)

Really hoping we get some breaks in the weather soon...this is just plain ugly!