Finished 42 inch oven in Nicaragua

[ogopogodude]

one last thing (sorry for the many posts in a row) .. I bought my reproduction cast iron door from eBay. It wasn't that badly priced. When it arrived from the UK .. yes, .. the United Kingdom, . at that moment , .. I knew that I HAD to carry out my plans of building a pizza oven. This door is kinda neat in that it squeaks when it opens & closes. I suppose that I could oil the hinges, but I don't wanna ... I like the squeak. And lastly, this door is rather heavy. It is very well made.

Don't be worried about having an item shipped from Europe to land on your door. I am from Canada and this door arrived in less than two weeks. What was funny is that I could tell that Customs had likely opened up the parcel as I could tell it was frigged around with and then re-taped and finally sent to my house. But the Border people did a good job of re-packaging it. I suppose they were looking for drugs or illegal items. In any event, I found out after I bought my cast iron door that there are three versions of it: mine has a swing open to look inside peep-hole .. .which I really like... and there is another version with temperature gauge , and then there is a third version with a horizontal vent on the bottom.

[ogopogodude]

I guess the easiest thing to do (since I am not really good at explaining myself) is to go youtube, .. and type in the search bar these words: pizza oven Lee McNeil
And then there should be three separate videos that he created. But a word of warning... you will be hooked. You will be pouring a foundation because you will want to build your oven as soon as you can....

But take your time, .. make sketches ..... Oh ... !!!! THAT is the name of the website ... it is called SketchUp .... then go toTHAT website and type in the exact same words. But you may have to download driver or something like that from the SketchUP website .. after you do that , .. you can play with the pizza oven template by Lee.

Good luck with your plans and your future build.. it is a LOT fo fun.

[ogopogodude]

by the way, .. the little smoker on the side is something I have yet to use but I will this summer. The whole idea of the smoker is that this side combustion chamber simply is just that .. a combustion chamber to make a fire of low intensity ... and the heat and smoke rise up into the pizza dome to smoke your food. The whole idea behind smoking is to keep a constant low heat so as not to actually cook your food but to smoke it over time.
Now in reality there are smokers on the market that keep a constant temperature and so on so the addition to the smoker combustion chamber (which mine sill needs a door etc) is only for bragging rights for now anyway. Some people do not put a door on their pizza oven but I wanted one (because is looks cool ...) and I needed one (if I was to use the smoker as I need the door closed).

To answer your Questions ... Everything is mortared and such ... the only removable little part is the brick that blocks the orifice of the vent that the smoker chimney vents . And the DOME is in fact the actual smoking area for food ...not the side smoker combustion chamber. Clear as mud? lol

[ogopogodude]

Thanks, MArkDLxu for your post ... Here's the deal ... I got hooked on pizza oven making when I watched a series of THREE videos put out by a member here by the name of Lee McNeil on YOUTUBE. I made a few modifications to his cool design but really I virtually copied it... He also did a design on a 3-D website with the ability to make a virtual pizza oven in the planning stage. One can visit this site and see his uploaded 3D design and rotated it in all dimensions and then make it bigger / smaller, etc. Anyways, he mentions this website in his 3 part series on youtube.

[MarkDLxu]

Hmmm, for the life of me, I cannot find the interior photos of the inside of the oven dome showing the little hole/passageway. I will have to take some new photos with my iPhone by sticking my hand inside the dome and get proper images (with & without the little 1/2 firebrick in place)

looking forward to see this detail !!
i'd like also to build a little smoker on the side and then let the smoke pass into the dome by this removable brick,,, but:
1) since is not "glued" with mortar, is the all structure still firm and solid?
2) is the dome chamber good enough to work as a smoking chamber?

i don't have any experience in this, hope you can give me some hints

[Alomran]

Finally completed the door for my oven based on the Ebook from this site. Had to make some material substitutions along the way due to material availability in Nicaragua. With the aid of a Nicaraguan who had some familiarity with masonry, we built the oven over several months (was also finishing my house, so the oven wasn’t the top priority. I’ll start with some of the completed photos and then post various photos from the build progress.

A beautiful Oscan Nemier or Mies van der Roh style house.

[ogopogodude]

Hmmm, for the life of me, I cannot find the interior photos of the inside of the oven dome showing the little hole/passageway. I will have to take some new photos with my iPhone by sticking my hand inside the dome and get proper images (with & without the little 1/2 firebrick in place)

[ogopogodude]

Here's a few more pics:

[ogopogodude]

Good day, Chris.

You have a good eye. Yes, .. my pizza oven dome does, in fact, have a little opening on the dome interior .. but this hole is really "a passageway" from the smoker firebox that is down and to the left of the main pizza oven dome.

The passageway, as I like to call it, rather than a hole, .. is on the firebrick dome rather than the floor of the oven. There is a modified 1/2 fire brick which I can set back into place to "complete" the inner dome when I want to do pizzas, etc .. then if I want to do some smoking of food items on a much lower inner dome temperature .. then the brick is removed and a small fire is made in the smoker box & the cast iron door is closed completely. The smoke rises and enters into the pizza dome, then exhausts out the vent.

I am not sure if I will end up actually using the smoker function all that much. However , I do like the option of being able to do so .. and besides, .. it was a brilliant idea that I copied from a youtube poster Lee McNeil (also a member here at fornobravo, at one time in the past). Lee McNeil has a series of three videos on youtube as well as a real nice 3-D immersible plan on a website called Sketch-up. One really should check out SketchUP as it really is quite cool to be able to 3-D rotate the images of one's pizza oven ... even before starting a project & digging the foundation.

On another topic ... in my photos, you will see the cast iron hinged door was originally mortared into the wrong position. This wasn't a real HUGE mistake .. but it hast to be corrected before anymore work could go forward. I informed my mason that I wanted a certain shaped vent and positioned differently (for the "draw" of airflow to be directed 45 degrees back and then centered over the peak of the dome). My mason had to dismantle the already-masoned cast iron door and move it forward by about a foot. This would allow proper venting.

My mason tried to tell me that the oven will work just fine without doing the modification (i.e. to fix the "mistake" that was made since I was at my workplace, and I couldn't monitor each and every step during the build). I insisted on the correction since the way he had it masoned, ... all the smoke and heat would ONLY come out the door (which he was going to recess inwards). Then there would be staining of soot, and so on. My mason finally "caved" into my wishes and the proper venting was fabricated.

[ChrisC]

Wow, ... I sure do like your dome, as the masonry brick "seams" are tight and thin. I would think that this would certainly retain heat a lot better than my dome fire brick work. The refractory heat aspect is going to be awesome.

I purchased firebricks that were tapered from side to side which were almost perfect for a 42” diameter circle/dome. I also have a Dewalt tile/masonry saw, since I was doing all of the tile installation for my house. It made it a bit easier for getting a reasonably tight fit, and refractory mortar works best when the joints are kept fairly thin.

I have had it fired up for pizza and inserted the door when done (before I completed the carving and thermometer installation) and it has been hot enough to bake bread the following morning. Need to get a good IR thermometer to properly check temperature (another hard to find item in Nicaragua). Found cheaper, low range ones (cheaper in quality, prices are high since it is imported). May have to order one from Amazon and have it muled down.

It looks like you have an opening on the bottom side edge of your dome. If so, for what purpose? The seams on the inside are more important than the outside, assuming you were using a more forgiving mortar mix. Overall, yours is looking good and I assume based on the metal arch that you have a cast iron or steel hinged door to install.

[ogopogodude]

Here's a few of my firebrick work prior to final outer dome work.

[ogopogodude]

Wow, ... I sure do like your dome, as the masonry brick "seams" are tight and thin. I would think that this would certainly retain heat a lot better than my dome fire brick work. The refractory heat aspect is going to be awesome.

[ChrisC]

A couple of wood peels I made and more photos of the oven door. Woodworking is a hobby of mine, and I brought my tools from Canada when we moved here.

[ChrisC]

Basic oven completed. The oven was covered with a 2” layer of Kaowool, and once the enclosure was constructed, an additional 4” to 6” of pumice was poured in on top. I was unable to source vermiculite or perlite in Nicaragua, so settled on using the white pumice we have naturally here. I had a fabricator construct the chimney parts from stainless steel. The section below the roof was wrapped in Kaowool. The roof here is concrete, so we poured a collar with an air gap for the chimney to pass through.

[ChrisC]

Completing the dome and chimney arch.