Tuateawa: Tuateawa Mud Oven

One thing that Tuateawa does not lack is mud. It's price is right and there really isn't much more needed to make a mud oven. It is a rewarding process, as we found out last summer, when we built our own. It does require a reasonable time input but, if you do have that time, it will reward you in satisfaction and financial savings. We were encouraged by seeing the mud oven built by Te Radar on TVNZ. The instructions are downloadable from the TVNZ website and are both understandable and fairly complete. We also found an excellent book, probably Te Radar's source, called Build Your Own Earth Oven by Keiko Denzer. This was available in our local library. There are also many articles on the internet and some useful videos on Utube.

Mistakes are fairly likely in any new project. Luckily the technology involved is both simple and fairly forgiving so you can fix mistakes if you recognise them in time. Equipment requirements are also fairly minimal. Lacking a trailer we collected mud in old paint buckets. We used a spade/shovel to move mud around. A wheel barrow was used to mix mud and water and long rubber gloves were needed in the building process. A concrete float for smoothing and also a level and measuring tape were essential.

As there are such good instructions available elsewhere there seems little point in repeating them here. I am quite happy to accept responsibility for my own mistakes, it's something I've become used to over the years! However I would prefer not to feel guilty over the mistakes of others!The images included should be taken as a guide only. They show the main stages in construction. The overall structure though is a bit different from the Te Radar version. It works very well but has not yet stood the test of time! There are things that I have learned since it was built that I could include in a later post, for those interested.

Forming the level base

Making the sand dome

Sand dome covered with wet paper before mud applied

First mud layer

Three layers of mud

The finished oven has a diameter of 1.5m. and an height of 75cm. The internal space is 1m. in diameter and 50 cm in height. There are two openings, the oven entry is 32 cm in height. There is also a chimney vent at the top and toward the back. It took two people about twenty hours each over the course of five days to build the oven. Then a few days were allowed to pass before the sand dome which supported the oven during construction was removed.