In winter we cook mainly on our wood stove, but in summer we've had to rely on a propane range. I don't like using propane in the first place, but even worse is the fact that our particular propane oven has a big electric igniter that stays on when the oven is turned on. So summer baking has meant both fossil fuel use and an unwelcome electrical load. Then a couple of years ago a New York city publisher called me to check firewood terminology for an Australian book on brick ovens they intended to publish for the North American market. The publisher reciprocated by sending me a copy of Your Brick Oven by Russell Jeavons. It turned out to be a gem of a little book and it prompted me to build one.

Why are we investing in renewables?
The solar and electrical installation.
The wind turbine installation.
Solar domestic hot water.
A breakdown of the system cost.
System performance.
Heating the shop and battery enclosure.
The wood stove used for space and water heating and cooking.
The outdoor brickoven.
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Then I riveted together a 36" tall cylinder of the same steel siding we used for the house and tapconned it to the concrete.

Then I filled it with stone and concrete . . . a lot of stone and concrete. That was the hardest and least pleasant part of the whole project. I had to be careful not to let rocks bump the steel too hard because it is very thin and dents easily.

A rustic stone or brick shell would have been more attractive than this steel version, but I am more comfortable working in steel and besides, this was a lot less work.

So I used a mixture of 30% vermiculite block fill in the concrete for the pad under the oven floor. I used straight concrete for the rim around the outside of the pad where the oven dome would rest. At right you can see the pad with the firebrick splits laid out on it to form the oven floor.

In the centre of the floor you can see a pin in the hole used to locate the dome brick placing arm. See below.

• I only cut one brick for the whole project and the two resulting wedge-shaped pieces filled the gaps at the top of the door arch. There were two pieces to the plywood arch form, separated by a 2 x 4 screwed to them.
• The dome is made from half bricks, broken crudely with a big chisel and sledge.
• The dome bricks are placed accurately by using a steel rod with a piece of angle iron welded to it, which you can just see behind the last brick placed at the centre of the pic. The angle iron guide places the brick at the right angle both vertically and horizontally.

That circular thing in the door opening is a plywood disk with a mortar dome on it matching the curvature of the inside of the brick dome. It was held up under the remaining hole with wood framed rectangles I had to custom make. Once in position, I placed the remaining bricks from the top. Then I plastered the whole dome with mortar to fill gaps left by the jagged broken bricks.

Finally, I filled the remaining space between the brick dome and upper cylinder with vermiculite block fill to insulate the oven, and capped it with a sheet steel lid. Observers were disappointed that the dome wouldn't be visible. It is a shame but this is a case in which function had to trump form.

• One way is to move the fire to one side and keep it going, then clean the rest of the floor by sweeping it and then cook pizza right on the oven floor. This makes fabulous pizza. I bought a mason's brush and fitted a broom handle to it, making an excellent tool for sweeping the oven floor.
• The other way to use the oven is to remove the fire completely, sweep the floor and then bake with the insulated door in place. I bake bread and focaccia this way. I also baked a crock of beans overnight – in the morning the oven temperature was still over 200°F.

I have found out that the sheet metal thing I made for handling pizzas in and out of the oven is called a peel. When the fire is right a pizza takes about five minutes to cook.

I'm pretty pleased about this because we now buy organic, shade grown, fair trade coffee fifty pounds at a time for under $4 a pound including shipping compared to $15 per pound for roasted store-bought coffee. I am especially pleased because the resulting coffee is delicious.

Freshly roasted coffee in the sun, just after it stopped smoking, but before it was fully cooled.

I've been pushing advanced wood heating technology for 25 years, so it seems a little odd to go backward about 2000 years for this brick oven. On the other hand, once the fire is going well there is very little if any smoke and I've been pleasantly surprised at how little firewood it uses – roughly a wheelbarrow load for a whole baking cycle including coffee, pizza, focassia and bread.