The Cob Oven: Step Two

I've made some big progress this past week on the cob oven! We had been putting off this step because it seemed like one of the bigger manual labour aspects of it: digging the hole for the foundation. Dave spent a few summers with a shovel in-hand doing irrigation and cable work so he was the more realistic of the two of us about how hard digging a three foot deep hole would be. So one night while he was at frisbee and the kids went down early I got out the shovel and decided to dig the damn hole myself.

Not going to lie, it was pretty hard to get through the sod. But I just kept going. Then I hit a layer of straight up rocks.  Gah. But I kept going! Wouldn't you know it I dug a 3 foot hole in just about 2 hours! I'm still bragging about it. As someone who has never dug a large hole before I must say it was very satisfying. Then I tamped down the bottom of the hole as much as I could, and filled it with a small layer of drainage rock. Then I just tossed in a bunch of rubble and filled in the holes/gaps with smaller drainage rock until I got close to the top. (I ran out of small rocks so that's not what it's supposed to look like. Work in progress!)

When Dave got home, well, let's just say he was very surprised and impressed (yep, still bragging!). 

We've had a few people ask why we're digging down for a cob oven. You don't necessarily have to. Some people build them right on the ground.  But, by digging down and filling it with rock it helps with drainage and insulation. We are making an oven so the more heat it can retain the better.

Next steps:

1. Brick and mortar up the brick base
2. Get some more drainage rock to fill the base

This project has been so satisfying. I have absolutely no building experience and I'm both really surprised and pumped by how I'm doing this lol. You just start and figure out the next step as it happens :) 

P.S In case you're wondering, I was sore as hell the next day.