[Cob] please help my poor cob oven!!

[Brian Lavelle]

Nina;
    I'm no authority, but Kiko Denzer wrote a fine book on oven 
building.  Consider a roof, even a simple shed roof.   The oven must 
breathe or it will have crumbling issues.  No finish coat needed, but 
protection from direct rain is advised.  In fact, a cement mix on the 
outside will doom the oven to crumble.  Although an oven can be quickly 
rebuilt, your labor has value, and the simple bee hive oven could last a 
very long time, if cared for.   Elaborate and highly artistic designs 
have all the more to protect.  My oven is in Minnesota, and I found it 
stayed dry with just a tarp thrown over.   Only problem is that if used 
late in the afternoon with rain imminent, one day the inevitable 
happened.  I went to bed without tarping and we had an inch of hard rain 
in the night.  It drilled a hole almost through the oven.  I got lucky 
and was able to mix up a small batch of cob and patch it.    I have 
since built a shed roof over it, but still keep it tarped.  As to the 
cracks, they are going to occur. Nothing to worry about.  Good luck 
rebuilding and  baking.     Redtail



ninagrimmett wrote:
> i have built a cob oven after much research & book reading & thought i had the clay & sand to the instructions, it is all finished now, tho a few cracks in the surface, but from what i have read these are fixable, i have a clay,sand interior, followed two weeks later by a clay straw layer, again followed two weeks later by a clay sand bond crete(for waterproofing) layer, but we have had torrential rain here & despite all our efforts to keep the cob dry, it got soaked & the interior layer was so wet for ages & has started to fall down, i did start a small fire inside to try dry it out & stop the interior crumbling, but bits are still falling .... i was so looking forward to cooking in it soon & am so dissapointed, that all our hard work was in vein, any ideas?? i am new at this & thought all was going great, untill the rain came, any ideas, help, will be so greatly appreciated, i dont know if my oven will still be operable, with bits of the first layer of cob missing, it did dry out on the outside and started to on the inside when i had a small fire goin, but i was a bit worried about adding more fuel to the fire, but now more rain   thankyou for your time
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