Why I Oughta...

With excavation started on the site of our backyard wood-fired pizza oven (on our drywell) , I need to move from the theoretical (What could an oven look like?  How high should it be?  What would it need to be made out of?  How many cinder blocks? What layout?) In my recent post on excavation , I ran through some mental math to figure out what size the hole needs to be, what size the slab will be and how wide the block foundation will be once constructed.  I ran through both a 10x8x16 block scenario and an 8x8x16 block scenario.   The 8x8x16 is the traditional block, but I was considering if the extra 2" block in the first (one or two) courses is appropriate to all for the footing of a brick face on the sides of the oven. Off I went to Menards to poke around in the construction block section.  Back in January, I posted the details of how there are L-shaped cinder blocks that help make proper corners and I wondered if I should be using those to make a s...

Earlier this week, I posted my 3-D model using LEGO bricks of my proposed wood-fired pizza oven stand that would be built from a couple different sizes of standard cinder blocks - 16x8x8 and 8x8x8.  In that post (and using the model), I determined that I needed 4.5 blocks deep (from front-to-back) and 4 blocks wide (side-to-side).  That gave me a 74" deep by 64" wide block stand.  Or 6'2" deep and 5'4" wide. But...there's a new development.  At least...new to me, the novice bricklayer.  Turns out, there are 'corner' cinder blocks.   I discovered this fact when I was at Menards looking over the block inventory.  Here's a few photos showing these L-shaped corner-forming cinder blocks  below and how they work together with normal blocks.  These are 12" block compatible. Below is a drawing from Menards that shows the dimensions of these L-shaped corner cinder blocks in 10" width: There are so many variables that I still need to work out...