Directions for Building Outdoor Fireplaces
- 1). Pile the bricks, cement blocks or flat sided rocks into a platform/floor for the fireplace. Build this platform 4 or 5 feet high for fireplaces with ovens and cooking hearth shelves, making easy access to the oven or doors for the fire-tender. Ensure the floor of the oven is level and as flat as possible. Mortar is not necessary, (although the earth mix can serve as mortar if desired) unless if you live in a high-activity earthquake zone.
- 2). Unload two buckets of clay soil onto your ground tarp. Most dirt has a clay content. Add straw slowly by the armful, while also adding small amounts of water while mixing with your feet. Stomp, twist and smash the mix together while pulling the corners of the tarp into the middle. Your mix is ready when it begins to look like a folded burrito, or feels like uncooked bread dough to your feet.
- 3). Compact sand into a container you feel is big enough for the inside of your oven or firebox. Use a container the same shape as what you want for the inside of the box-oven. Wet the sand and press the sand in tight, then turn it upside down on top of your platform floor. Shape this wet sand-mold if needed. It will form the inside of your fireplace or oven. It is also common to form fire-brick walls by either mortaring them or stacking them and pressing the earth-clay mix behind these interior fire-box walls, forming the fireplace shape around them.
- 4). Pack the mix around your wet sand mold layer by layer. Apply the thick earth by hand loads, pressing and shaping it into an outer egg-shaped shell for the mould, or the more square firebox if you used bricks. Shape and load this wet clay until the dome is completely covered. Then make a complete shell of very thick clay-soaked straw at least 3 inches thick; it can be thicker even than the clay layer before it. This added shell and its attendant door makes the interior heat for an oven, it is unnecessary for a simple fireplace with grill.
- 5). Shape and apply another layer of earth over this layer, again at least 3 or 4 inches thick. Smoothing the outermost layer with a wetter earth mix with less straw offers a smooth outer oven look. Find a piece of art that can double as a door handle or use a nicely shaped, thick piece of wood. As the damp earth dries to a leathery consistency, insert your handle firmly into the area you selected for the door, if you decided to have one.
