Outdoor cooking - Barbecues, Barbecue, BBQs, BBQ, Smokers, Grills. And Ribs.

I didn't really keep a record, but here are some very approximate figures:

£150 on materials for the foundation (but I went way a bit overboard on this stage, could be done for less)
Breeze blocks £60?
2 lintels at £10 a pop
Concrete slab materials nicked off the builders, probably £10
£25 vermiculite board
Fire bricks were free of a sparky mate who regularly guts them, but come up regularly on ebay for a quid or so each
Syrup drum £5
Clay layer materials £60
Ceramic blanket £15
Perlite concrete materials £60
Render materials £15
Chimney £40
Paint £10

That's £470-ish. If you can't borrow a mixer then you'd need to factor in hiring one for a week and trying to get it all done then, or multiple hires, which will possibly add hundreds to the cost. A surprising number of people have them though.

I borrowed one via nextdoor.com. Some bloke down the road bought one to landscape his huge garden and hadn't used it since so was happy to let me have it for as long as I needed it once the builders buggered off with their's. I paid him a couple bottle of rouge and he was fucking delighted.

If you had a solid bit of land to build on you could swerve the foundation altogether perhaps. And if you used salvaged materials for the base you could save a few quid. I've seen them built from wood, which if you're patient you might find cheap/free somehow. The only thing you can't really skimp on is the fire clay layer, which has to be able to absorb a huge amount of heat, and the insulation layers, which have to keep that heat in for as long as possible.

It is quite an investment but it cost nearly half as much to cover that area of our garden with blue slate chippings and a few sleepers for a mini retaining wall and the enjoyment I get out of that is precisely 0.1% compared to the 100% of a single home cooked pizza, let alone the infinite amount that are going to come out of the oven and into my face in the future.