Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cob oven experience

[Sandra J Stowell (sjstowell1000]

Personal take on our community cob oven, now gone... after some angst, 
much delay, and a some hard work.

We built a sturdy block base (that was difficult to remove) for a cob 
oven built for us in a training workshop (which was rescheduled 2 or 3 
times).

Then community put on a thin stucco coat and built a roof that was 
sturdy & just barely large enough to shelter a cook table and a chef. 
Even with the roof, the stucco was peeling off the cob oven, and it was 
shabby, and unusable at this point.

Over the course of six or so years, the oven was probably used about 4-5 
times altogether!

It was much too small to be useful for community meals, or even most 
small social events.  And the start up/heat up time, with some 
observation and tending needed, did not work well for us. We never made 
it pretty because it really was not functional for us.

If you envision this for meals of more than 6-8 people, it will need to 
be much larger than ours.

--

Sandra Stowell

Sandra Stowell <http://SandraStowell.com> & PTArtist.com 
<http://ptartist.com>