The story of our oven in Calgary AB

[Rinrat86]

The end is near! We removed the IT, put an old exercise ball in the dome and inflated it. Covered it with a sheet of plastic - not sure why, it isn't as if I thought I'd want it back. The nice thing about using the ball was that it supported the bricks as we put them in. Cutting and fitting bricks became a distinct challenge as the hole got smaller, but by this point we were both really proficient with the angle grinder!

[Rinrat86]

The final hole and the keystone. Correction that brick is the last one in the last row. You can see it in place in the top left of centre.

[Rinrat86]

To make the keystone work well I ended up cutting it into two pieces. There were a couple angles that just could not be accommodated by a single brick. I made paper templates to show the exact shape of the top and bottom of the hole. I don't know how long I worked on that final bit, but probably more than an hour. It was fiddly and I walked away from it a couple times before getting it to a point I was happy with.

[Rinrat86]

Closure!!! Amazing how good placing such a little brick can feel.

I've added a picture from just before the keystone was placed as it shows how much messier the mortar was due to using the ball to guide and support the bricks. I ended up crawling inside the dome with a headlamp, safety gear and the grinder to clean that up. I also went back in with a bit of mortar to ensure that the gaps were well filled.

[Rinrat86]

Done! Well, no not really, but finally to the point of making fire! After the 5th or so curing fire I just couldn't bear to let that good heat go to waste so roasted potatoes and chicken in there. We won't talk about the pan of greens (learning curve).

[Rinrat86]

The dreaded cracks. After getting it fired right up we had cracks and after having a beer or two and looking through the forum we both calmed down and accepted, yep, its ok, its normal, no problem. Yes it takes a lot of convincing! We ground out mortar in a couple of the worst ones and refilled them with fresh mortar. We also slapped a thin layer of mortar all the way around the base to seal the ceramic fibreboard away from the elements.

[Rinrat86]

Insulation. We had 100 square feet of 1" Cerablanket ceramic wool insulation. The entire dome is covered with at least 3 inches with whatever we had leftover going on the top of the dome. It was then covered with a layer of chicken wire to hold it in place and make sure we got the nice dome shape.

[Rinrat86]

We decided early that we did not want an enclosure but an igloo shaped oven. We had a good sized stack of natural stone veneer / thinstone left from when we refinished the trim and siding on the house so we wanted to use that. Here is where I found the forum didn't have much information for me. We weren't able to find other examples of a mortared stone finish. Most are built within an enclosure or stuccoed. So I went to the source of my stone - my brother who is with the quarry! Based on his recommendation we made a thincoat using Type S mortar mixed with Mapei's Keralastic acrylic latex additive instead of water.

[Rinrat86]

And then we mortared on the stone with the same Type S mortar mixed with Keralastic. The kids did a great job select puzzle pieces as we went along and there were very few where we had to cut to fit. After completely covering it with stone we got out a grout bag and filled all the spaces. One thing we did was make sure the grout was positioned in a way that encouraged water to run off and to eliminate any low spots that could trap water. The final photo shows after we'd finished the grouting and after we'd had our first family pizza dinner.

[Rinrat86]

Our first pizza! Note the temperature on the thermometer is in Celcius.

[Rinrat86]

I even built a door for the oven. It was built out of left over 2x4 and 2x6s, two different sections laminated together (so it was about 3.5" thick). Sanded, oiled ... beautiful. It was never intended to be used with a live fire, simply to hold heat in if I was baking, and keep rain and squirrels out.

I'm sure you all can guess the result. It got put on after the first pizza night with a great big bed of coals glowing red. I won't say who put it on, but it wasn't me! The second photo shows all that remained the next morning!

My new door has the same outer look, but instead of a second laminated layer of wood, I've used the ceramic fibreboard that was used to frame the arch initially. I wrapped the fibreboard in aluminum foil tape to ensure no fibres escape then encased it in a layer of sheet metal (used for ducting) that wraps around to the wooden portion. Looks like I haven't taken any photos of it. That door is holding up much better

[Rinrat86]

Since September we've managed to have pizza dinner 3 times and had 5 pizza parties (including one with 45+ people) and 1 carnivorous feast (venison shanks, roast chicken, stuffed tenderloin, grilled shrimp, with roast potatoes and other goodies). I've done baked beans and stock a couple times. I'm getting closer to figuring out the bread but not quite there yet!

[Rinrat86]

As an added bonus we quickly realised that this woodpile was not going to last so have gotten to go out with our chainsaw and collect firewood (yes I actually think thats fun). One thing I noticed is most everything I read said you should only use hardwood. Well here in Alberta we have softwood forests. Birch is the only native hardwood (poplar / aspen isn't really hard) and it is exceedingly rare in the public forests (because everybody wants some). When we started burning this year we had a small stash of elm, manitoba maple and cottonwood collected after a big snowstorm took down trees here a last fall, but most of our wood is (and always will be) pine, spruce or maybe tamarack (larch) We heat the oven with the softwood but if we're cooking pizza we'll switch to whatever hardwood we have to get a good flame without the sparks and cinders of the conifers.

[Gulf]

Since operating a WFO for some time, I've changed my mind somewhat on softwood. Since WFOs burn at such high temps, softwood is ok, if ithe wood is dry . Your doing right by conserving the hardwood in your area.

[UtahBeehiver]

I use a mix of soft and hard woods since I access to both. I typically use pine and fir during the initial and mid heating of the oven where the highest usage of wood consumption occurs for me then finish out with hardwood for my pizza cooking. For residual heat cooking, ie breads, roast, etc. the oven doesn't know hard from soft anyway. Use what you got, but a nice piece of hardwood during the final stages does add a nice flavor to the crust.