Anyone here know anything about...Wood Fired Pizza Ovens?
- Thread starter CavLancer
- Start date
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Yup the Jagna house is rented for a few more months by a Danish guy and his Filipina wife and they have their kids with them. Hopefully the guy's father will buy the place but who knows, I have serious doubts. That house is in Jagna town and not on the ocean so I only have just the one ocean house, though that has 2 buildings connected by a bridge its really only one house.
There is also a 10 bed women's boarding house for the college girls going to the local college on a joining property. Okay now you can be jealous.
So if they don't buy the Jagna house what we would end up doing in a few years is turning the house into a restaurant and tearing down the boarding house, which is really just a temporary structure anyway, and putting in a building with a big honkin pizza oven. Or hmmm, maybe we could just retrofit the existing building.
The rooms Dolores and I rent are in our ocean house, and they rent a night or two at a time. We've had now a Dutch couple, a German couple, and several Filipino folks as well as renting basically the whole place overnight to the local electric company for their Christmas party.
So its all good, just wish we could finish this place. If we could sell pizzas I think we could make some serious dough $, live a normal middle class life etc. Now we live kinda like I did when I was in my late 20s early 30s, kinda closer to poverty that I'd like, as difficult as that is to believe looking at these pics.
Where do I want to be? I really want to be back in Oregon pumping gas day in and out, or driving a shuttle like I used to do, or some other menial job at minimum which is pretty good in Oregon. I want to do that because I know I have to, it will likely be the last time I ever will, and I want to get it done. Thing is, gotta get the kids their visas and to do that we have to get the adoption done. The goal is their citizenship as well as a bunch of savings to finish things here.
Life, you know. Details, details.
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Somehow missed this Jay, sorry. I will do that, definitely. We have been okay with our hires so far. The folks here a basically very honest, definitely hard working, so its harder to mess up than some other places. So far our hires have been mostly okay. If anything they like to make decisions they see as good and we occasionally have to correct that situation. For example our stereo system is in the bar and we play quiet but nice background music. Spanish guitar, Sax, piano. No vocals which distract imo. Our barmaid decided it would be much better blasted and when I went out to the bar I couldn't hear myself think. I immediately turned it down, looked her straight in the eye and said "Never touch this please." I think I said please anyway. So she never has again, and I like that.
Dave Ramsey, got it. :b:
Zkribbler
Deity
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Yup, and there never was a better friend! Zkrib. :b:
Takhisis, What do you want to happen?
Takhisis,
What do you want to happen?
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Here's a pic taken by a customer. Its the single best pic of the place taken so far, imo. Pizza oven is on the right partially obscured by a sun shade. Still waiting on the cam to take better pics of the oven.
Very nice. And it is mostly typhoon proof too?
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Well there's typhoons and then there's typhoons. We had a signal (category) 1 that quickly turned into a 3 (Katrina) come right through here in the middle of the night, no warning. Destroyed or damaged a bunch of the small fishing boats and the storm surge sank a ship on the limestone dock. Lifted it up and set it down on top of the dock. The sliding doors of this house that in the pic are up on the left were wide open and all of a sudden a typhoon came in one and out the other, right over my bed. That woke me up! I ran around and closed everything, pulled the kids away from the windows on their matress. It was insane outside the windows for a while, but the frames for the glass are made of ipil-ipil, more dense than oak, they brushed it off and the glass held. The kids slept through the whole thing. In the morning Abby said, "Why are there pieces of tree everywhere?" So it made it through that. If a super typhoon had hit here I doubt we would have escaped damage. Still, the buildings are small and the wind can blow around them.
It is possible to get such a typhoon here, but they are rare. The typhoon track takes these storms to the north with surprising regularity. There was a signal 4 that was projected to hit right here on this section of coast but in crossing Mindanao it ran into the mountains of Surigao and turned so we got very little.
Its a good question Birdjaguar. I did my best... and it survived the 7.2 quake that struck this island. The trick to that is keeping weight down low. That's why both my building and Zkrib's have a 4th floor made of wood instead of poured concrete. Both did well in the quake. In a typhoon on my place the 4th is made to blow out, its got 1/4" plywood tacked on the inside but on the outside its rolled out plastic with amakan (woven bamboo) over it. So, if a strong typhoon comes in before it blows down the building it loses a bunch of sail area as the skin is stripped off. Plus the roof is really well screwed down heavy gauge, sun resistant plastic, so hopefully we would keep that. The pitch of the roof is not great enough to block the wind and get blown to bits but with the walls blown out it might generate lift like a wing and want to fly the sheets off the building but some stuff is just the way it is. The structure of the 4th, stripped of its cheap stuff is jemolina stud wall reinforced with thin concrete posts and that might remain with the wind howling through it. If all goes according to plan a replace of the outer skin would keep until we got back from the US where we would have to go to make the $ to redo the interior. From the 3rd floor on down its solid poured concrete posts and beams with hollow block on the 1st and 2nd floor. That ought to be fine. The 3rd floor bar is already open air mostly, it would just blow through from the start. The other structure is not as tall and should be fine.
It is possible to get such a typhoon here, but they are rare. The typhoon track takes these storms to the north with surprising regularity. There was a signal 4 that was projected to hit right here on this section of coast but in crossing Mindanao it ran into the mountains of Surigao and turned so we got very little.
Its a good question Birdjaguar. I did my best... and it survived the 7.2 quake that struck this island. The trick to that is keeping weight down low. That's why both my building and Zkrib's have a 4th floor made of wood instead of poured concrete. Both did well in the quake. In a typhoon on my place the 4th is made to blow out, its got 1/4" plywood tacked on the inside but on the outside its rolled out plastic with amakan (woven bamboo) over it. So, if a strong typhoon comes in before it blows down the building it loses a bunch of sail area as the skin is stripped off. Plus the roof is really well screwed down heavy gauge, sun resistant plastic, so hopefully we would keep that. The pitch of the roof is not great enough to block the wind and get blown to bits but with the walls blown out it might generate lift like a wing and want to fly the sheets off the building but some stuff is just the way it is.
The structure of the 4th, stripped of its cheap stuff is jemolina stud wall reinforced with thin concrete posts and that might remain with the wind howling through it. If all goes according to plan a replace of the outer skin would keep until we got back from the US where we would have to go to make the $ to redo the interior. From the 3rd floor on down its solid poured concrete posts and beams with hollow block on the 1st and 2nd floor. That ought to be fine. The 3rd floor bar is already open air mostly, it would just blow through from the start. The other structure is not as tall and should be fine.
You designed for the environment I see. Smart. Beautiful and functional. How far above "sea level" is your first floor?
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Nothing like a guy in the building trade to know how to construct a house. Architects see design but builders understand realities.
J
J
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Thanks! Perhaps 4ish meters, though the ocean side is raised about a meter and a half above the land side/road level. That's to help the wall handle the shock of the large waves we get in a certain season. Been a while since I did all those calculations and a lot of calculations happened between then and now. Its a bit of a guess. The freakin concrete spiral stairs were very stressful as well. Those stairs had to turn in 3 dimensions while rising. They had to meet the bottom of the pool, plus the lower bridge and the upper bridge at a time when those 3 things didn't exist. I also drew no plans besides an occasional sketch to relate concepts because I've seen how plans limit the evolution of design and tell people what to think. Better to let workers think for themselves. That spiral though, it was a nightmare. The workers would wait for me in the morning to give them their work and the day of the spiral was approaching and I wasn't going to be ready. Then what? No work? Then one night it came to me how to do it, at 3AM. Slept good after that. Also built that post as a particularly stable platform with 3 meters buried below the pool and a particularly large foundation. The post itself is 16" thick with the best metal bars available. So I had planned where to run if there was a quake and the family was in our rooms. We were when the quake came and I led them out onto the platform on top of that post and that's where we rode it out. Ring of fire and all that.
That's the trick Jay. Too much of design is where rooms and closets and bathrooms get put without consideration for the overall effect. The effect is the same easy thing, right angle boxes. I'll tell you my #1 trick, avoid right angles where possible. If you do that you end up having to really think! You might end up with a 5 sided building like my 4 story or a better view like my 3 story with the 2 side walls inclined toward the ocean view... Another trick is only do things if they make sense, avoid being trendy or gimmicky. Take the fartsy out of artsy...
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
My dad was an architect, but he worked construction while in school and remodeled the house in his spare time. He thought hands on experience avoided 90% of the problems.
J
J
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Sounds like he took every opportunity to advance his knowledge of his chosen profession, a wise man, yes?
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
CavLancer
This aint fertilizer
Stubborn can be a very positive trait. :b:
