A brick stove for a bath is a classic of the "genre". And the technology of its masonry has been improved for centuries. Let's talk about how to lay out a brick sauna stove with your own hands.
The main elements of a brick oven for a bath
The basic elements of a brick oven have remained unchanged for many years, and the location of each part has been verified by experience. Laying begins with the markup (drawing) of the future structure. There are various laying schemes, but any drawing of a brick bath stove will contain the following parts:
- A blower (ash pan) or furnace casting, which may include chimney cleaning wells, fireplace grate, views, cast iron stove, grate, firebox and more.
- Firebox - fireclay brick is required for laying it.
- Chimney and stove, which are made of natural stone, red heat-resistant or refractory bricks.
- Capacity (tank) for water.
Appliances and materials for the construction of a brick sauna stove
It's not so difficult to build a brick oven for a bath with your own hands, and for its construction you will need the following materials:
- Fireclay bricks, red heat-resistant bricks or natural stone.
- The binder solution requires fine sand and clay.
- Steel corner and tape, galvanized wire.
- Asbestos cord, waterproofing material (roofing material).
This list can be supplemented with the elements indicated in the sauna stove diagram: the more complex the drawing, the more construction costs will be required.
Please note that only high-quality material should be used for laying the stove structure. The red brick is taken from the M grade with the designation from 75 to 150. The frost resistance of the brick must be at least 25 cycles, its shape must be correct, without chips. The quality of the material is checked by tapping: a good brick has a sonorous sound, and a bad firing will give a muffled sound. Of the required tools, the following devices are useful in work: a large bucket (container) for mortar, for cutting bricks - a grinder with a circle for metal, an electric drill with a mixer nozzle, a construction level, a plumb line, a trowel, a mallet made of wood, measuring devices (tape measure and marker).
Laying the foundation for a brick oven in a bath
The construction of a brick oven should begin with laying the foundation. To do this, we perform the following actions:
- We dig a foundation pit about 70 cm deep, below the level of soil freezing.
- We make the width of the pit at the bottom a little larger than the main hole in order to prevent the structure from moving in the future (any soil always moves a little).
- We fill the hole with a 15 cm layer of sand, fill it with water.
- Then comes a layer of broken brick with a stone, which should reach 20 cm.
- Next, we fill in the crushed stone, on which we install the formwork and reinforcement (a frame made of metal rods). The installation of the formwork and steel rods is carried out only after the sand has shrunk.
- Pour a layer of concrete on top so that the distance from it to the surface of the earth is 15 cm.
- We remove the formwork, apply several layers of tar on the sides, and fill the gaps with sand or gravel.
- We finish the work on the arrangement of the foundation by laying roofing material or other waterproofing material in several layers, the dimensions of which should be equal to the area of the base.
Preparation of mortar for a brick sauna stove
The quality of a brick oven for a bath largely depends on the binder mixture with which the brick is laid. The classic mixture for masonry oven construction consists of clay and sand: part of the sand in the solution should be more than half of the total volume of clay or 3/2 part. In this case, the components of the solution are carefully selected and prepared for mixing.
In order for the brickwork to be durable, its own mandatory requirements apply to each element of the solution:
- Sand … Used fine-grained (grains up to 1-1.5 mm in size), river, but without silt impurities. Before mixing the mixture, the sand is passed through a sieve with holes of 1.5 mm.
- Clay … Before use, it is placed in a container, crushed and, stirring, is poured with water with a small top. After 24 hours, this mixture is passed through a sieve, crushing the lumps. Repeat the procedure if necessary. As a result, a mass of homogeneous pasty consistency should be obtained, to which sand is added. How greasy the clay is, determines the percentage of sand in the slurry.
Particular attention should be paid to the clay mixture for laying a brick oven: if the solution is too liquid (skinny), then it will not give a good bond to the bricks, and vice versa - too fatty mixture after some time cracks and shrinks.
Consider two ways to determine the quality of the mortar for laying the stove:
- A ball with a diameter of 5 cm rolls down from the clay solution. Two wooden planks are taken: this ball is placed on one, and the second is pressed down on it. A bad (skinny) mortar is obtained if the ball crumbles under the pressure of the board before cracking occurs. The mortar is considered suitable for use if cracks have formed on 1/3 of the ball. If the cracks have filled half the diameter of the ball, then the mortar is very "greasy" and sand must be added.
- The next method consists in rolling two of the same balls out of the solution, but one of them is spread out to a cake with a diameter of 10 cm. Then they are left to dry for two or three days, after which the general condition is assessed. If the cake and the ball are covered with cracks, then the clay mixture is very greasy, and if the ball does not crumble when thrown from a meter height onto a wooden surface, then your mortar is good enough for laying a stove.
Important! In the market or in stores, you can find a ready-made clay mixture in order to fold a brick oven for a bath with your own hands. Typically, these solutions have good performance characteristics.
Brick sauna stove masonry
A brick oven for a bath is first built without mortar, dry, according to the chosen scheme. There are many options for the ordering of the stoves, and the choice of the scheme depends on the individual preferences of the owner of the bath, the required thermal power, and the design of the bath room is also taken into account. The laying of each row begins with a corner brick, while the required bricks are selected in such a way that they adjoin each other as closely as possible, thereby reducing the thickness of the masonry joint.
Please note: if the base for the furnace is below the floor level, then the brick is laid using a mixture of cement and sand (one to three). And if it is located opposite the floor level, in the process of laying the stove, a sheet of metal is installed on the side where the firebox will go out.
After roughing, you can proceed to the finishing laying of the stove. Each brick must be dipped into a container of water for 20 seconds in order for the liquid to fill the pores. Next, we perform the following actions:
- Using a trowel, we take the required amount of clay mixture, level the mortar at the masonry site.
- Dip the already marked brick into a bucket of water and set it on the mortar, keeping an eye on the thickness of the seam - it should not exceed half a centimeter.
- Set the brick down by tapping it with a trowel, picking up the rest of the mixture on the sides of the masonry joint.
- Try to always take the same amount of solution. Apply the mixture to a new location under the brick, as well as to the edge of the brick that has already been laid. This edge has the name - butt, the masonry seam there should not exceed 3 mm.
- The next brick is laid with a poke to the butt (they should be smeared with a clay mixture).
- Please note: the thickness of the seam is the better.
- We check the ordering scheme. After three or four rows, wipe the masonry with a wet rag.
Important! When laying the stove, the vertical seams should not coincide, they are overlapped by the brick of the next row exactly in the middle, or at least 1/4 of the brick. Also, the brick is not laid with the damaged side inside the oven. The hewn halves of the bricks are placed inside the masonry, but in no case inside the chimney or the stove itself.
Arrangement of a brick sauna stove
The firebox is made of fireclay bricks, which are not tied up with ordinary bricks due to a significant difference in temperature expansion coefficients. Between refractory and fireclay bricks, they stand at least half a centimeter. The furnace lining is laid from fireclay bricks, placing it with the edge down and using a special bonding solution for fireclay. It should be borne in mind that when buying a combustion chamber, it is recommended to carefully check the serviceability of the fastening of the combustion door to the chamber itself and its tightness.
Furnace casting is usually made from cast iron, the expansion coefficient of which is much higher than that of bricks. It is for this reason that cast iron components (firebox doors, grates, water tanks) must be installed with a gap. The grate is mounted without the use of a binder mixture at intervals of at least half a centimeter on all sides, so that it can be easily replaced in case of burnout.
After completing the masonry and installing the chimney, the brick oven for the bath must be dried. To do this, leave all doors and dampers open, not only in the oven, but also in the bathhouse itself, preferably for several days. After 3-4 days, the stove is heated with small chips several times in a row until condensation disappears on the door. The drying of the brick stove is over when moisture no longer forms on the damper - this means that it has come out, and the laying of the stove has been completed successfully.
And finally, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the technology of building a brick sauna stove by watching a thematic video:
We examined the basic questions about how to lay out a brick oven for a brick bath with our own hands. Good luck!
