I am building the Grande and before I build the hearth slabs I looked up the approximate weight. They are incredibly heavy. How did you deal with getting them on top of the base? I don’t think my son and I can lift them by ourselves.
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I put the forms onto the base and poured them one at a time, then after they set up I built some wooden tools to flip them over. Wasn’t a lifting problem it was fairly easy to flip.
Note that this was a test fit for the tool. I removed the form sides first and then flipped it over. USE CAUTION.
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Welcome to the BrickWood forum, and glad to hear your Barile Grande project is underway.
Hoisting the slabs onto the concrete base seems to be the most intimidating part of this project for many builders. They are heavy, but there are ways to get those babies up there.
Here is an extensive thread on the subject that should give you some ideas:
And two thoughts:
- It’s not really just you and your son. You can also invite Archimedes along. Yeah, I know he lived around 300 BC, but his “Lever Principle” is an immortal discovery that will help you get the slabs up there.
- The base will not break or shift while you’re pushing, pulling, hoisting, shifting, and levering the slabs up on top. It is one less thing to worry about.
And finally, more builders in recent years have tended to build each slab in place, as @pebecker describes. Not for nothing, but the wooden tools in his great photo are a lever (the long arm that extends out the back of the base) that pivots at the edge of the slab (which makes it the short arm being levered). Ingenious.
Read his post, and also the thread I linked for other ideas. And if you’re still stumped, come back to this thread and ask more questions. We’ve all had to deal with this one way or another, and folks here are happy to share what we’ve learned!
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@gspreeman When I built my oven I had the same concern and no available help to lift hearth slabs. As @bikerbudmatt mentioned, some of us opted to build the hearth slab in place doing a single pour. Some built supported wooden forms, but in my case I opted to place individual concrete window lintels on the pedestal and then just build a simple rectangular form on top of them to pour the hearth slab as a single piece. There were pros and cons to this approach.
Pros:
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No problem for me and a neighbor placing 8 lintels on top of the pedestal
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Since the lintels I used were wider than hearth, I ended up with nice shelves to place things on
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No complicated form work, just a rectangle made from the same 2x6 boards used to pour the base slab.
Cons: -
Additional cost - while not too expensive the lintels were an additional cost above the original design materials.
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I was able to buy them from the masonry yard where I bought virtually all the materials for my oven. Lintels are common, but sizes vary and may not be available everywhere.
Hopefully the pictures help, but please feel free to message me if you have questions and search the forum, lots of different approaches taken but there are definitely alternatives to avoid lifting 3 slabs up onto the pedestal.
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We needed 4 strong able bodied people to lift each of the 3 hearth slabs off the ground on top of the platform - each slab weighed in excess of 300 lbs and lifting it up 4 foot and placing it properly was one of the hardest parts of the job and needed 4 people. Using lintels is a great idea and I would have done it also but we started our oven build a few years ago and had the hearth pieces poured on the ground already…
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I took on the task of lifting the slabs by myself. Each one 300 lbs !!! No prior concrete experience to draw upon and excited to get started I built the forms in my garage. Then I realized how heavy they were! Fortunately I had a cart/handtruck to move them to backyard. Was a task loading the cart and wheeling slabs to my location. Then hoisting onto the base alone was impossible. 2 hours just to transport and lift just one!! I thought of the creation of the pyramids. Built a ramp. Measured the angles cut a frame from 2x4 wood and levered the slabs up position from the bottom of the ramp with a 2x4. Next two slabs took less than an hour. My contribution, if need to lift slabs onto base build a ramp. Much easier and a hundred times safer. The first slab took 2 hours because all my attempts had to protect me from having it fall one me. If I had to do it again building slabs a in place seems easier. If this is not possible, build close to final location (hard to move) use ramp and a 2x4 lever. simple, sturdy and much safer. Probably much safer with ramp because you don’t attempt to lift slabs at all. You just tilt, slide, rotate. Never lift. Slabs are always on a sturdy base. Ground to sturdy ramp, slide onto sturdy base. Risk of hurting yourself and others much reduced.
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We invited several friends over and we lifted it with no problems.
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The BrickWood Way. 
It’s amazing what friends will do on the promise of future pizza.
Exactly, they knew what was at stake, lol
Here is my progress. Built the form on the base and filled it with 5000 psi concrete. Need to pull out the wood supports but, it’s looking like something.
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Looking good! As a neophyte mason I remember how happy I was to have the hearth completed and finally reach the oven construction phase. Keep us posted!
Congratulations on this milestone!
Since this reply comes a few days later, wondering how you removed the bottom panel of your form from under the slab. (I can think of a number of ways to do it; it would be helpful for other builders to drop us a short note about that!)
Things are really shaping up!