With a very wet but equally sunny summer, I have been caught off guard a few times with glorious sunny late evenings cooking in the clay oven then as the oven is still hot but so is the evening I have left the cover off my gorgeous clay oven only for there to be a heavy down pour in the early hours of the morning, several times my clay oven got very wet and some of the clay washed away and created some pretty big cracks upon drying. Not to worry this is easily repaired.
The rain has softened and washed/melted off a thin layer of clay which has exposed the outlines of the hand made clay bricks that I used to make the final layer and exposed a rather awesome crack! This is not a disaster in the great scheme of things and after a little rational thinking it was clear only another layer of clay was needed to make good.
This is a pretty big crack and when I next used the oven I have smoke coming out of this crack which tells me that there is also movement cracks on the other two layers, this is nothing to worry about but if left would allow a minimal heat loss, therefore providing a new outer clay layer is at least 7cm thick will ensure your oven will retain maximum heat.
I used the puddled clay to fill the crack it, I then used a wooden rod to push as much clay into the cracks cavernous roots that you could not see but we're there hidden between layers, this was to help with minimal heat loss.
Finally a new 7cm thick layer of puddled clay and my fabulous clay oven is a s good as new, now I feel the need for the best ever cooked wood fired pizzas...
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