San Clemente, CA Build

[M2salmon]

Looks great! Did you use std 2.5 x 4.5 x 9” bricks for the front and back of the chimney?

[Mongo]

Just laid the last brick

[Mongo]

More progress this weekend.
This 'double arch' is more an an improvisation to compensate for a mistake in my layout that gave me a landing that was much too wide.
I'm reaching the end of my bricks and don't want to make the 2 hour drive to buy a handful of bricks so I've been hitting my scrap pile for some time.

Ran out of clay about 6 batches of mortar ago and started using brick dust. I can say I do not like the way brick dust mortar handles. Sets up faster and is very unforgiving.
I did make the 1 hour drive this weekend to buy another bag of clay.

Just cut my last 3 bricks. Looks like I'll make it.

[david s]

Yes, but every extra course of bricks adds significantly to the weight, placing more stress on any structural weakness. As each joint requires the full width of a brick to achieve the required bond strength the structure is already very heavy.

[Gulf]

This is just my opinion. I did not do a surpentine, so I do not speak from experience. But, you are right about the smoke chamber. Once you get back to horizontal, get at least a couple of courses above that to tie every thing together with an interlocking bond in all 4 corners. 2, 3, or what ever will allow you to transition smoothly. The more courses the better for strength and for a smooth transiton imo.

[JRPizza]

Interesting. If you frame your serpentine arch like I did in the link below you are going to end up with a rather large opening fore aft - is that what you are going to do and will your adapter plate fit? I had to round out my opening fore/aft at the top to fit my 8" adapter, which your design would have provided plenty of room, but I kind of like the look of the narrower serpentine bricks. That said, I also had to extend my chimney aft to transition from rectangle to square which you can see looking from the side - more mass to the rear of the serpent than in the front. Your mod may end up looking more balanced from the side so I'll watch with interest. I think one of the coolest things about home built ovens is they are like humans - they share lots of DNA but are all distinct individuals

https://community.fornobravo.com/for...510#post386510

[Mongo]

Mongo, if you can improve on the design please document so others can follow and learn. The way I built my vent has a good portion of the downward load carried by the front and rear vent arches, and the serpentine part of the vent is mostly in compression, but that design has been criticized for lack of interlocking bricks.
I have studied many of the builds on this forum going back to the early days, and the ovens have evolved as clever folks tweak the design. Just look at the basic oven shown in the FB plans and contrast that to some of the more recent builds. Looking forward to seeing what modifications you come up with!

So here's my attempt at an improvement.
Would have loved to execute it better/with a tighter gap. The dry fit was much better than the installation but I'm sure you know how that goes.
Of the 4 'reverse' arch bricks only the first one at the bottom is solely held in place by compression as you say.
The next 3 have a 1 inch 'wing' that overhangs the front and rear arch.

My gap between the front an rear arch is 7.5 inches. I now see it would have been better at 7 inches giving me an extra 1/2 inch width of the front arch and 1.5 inch wings over the front and back arch.
There shouldn't be any such thing as a 'smoke chamber' that's too big right? That would be hilarious.

[JRPizza]

Yes I bricked the flu form in. I have a plan.

Ah, you went for the "slice and dice". I was thinking you might burn it out

[Mongo]

Nice Job! Are you planing on enclosing the oven?

Thank you.
No, got going to enclose it. I like the look of the brick but as it's not exactly meant to be exposed I'll most likely be putting some kind of roof over the entire thing.
Going to blanket and stucco the dome and think about it over the summer.

[Chach]

Nice Job! Are you planing on enclosing the oven?

[Mongo]

Outer arch and flue are set.

[Mongo]

Whilst the form works well for efficient smoke extraction, the structural instability of lining up all those vertical joints rather than tying them in, concerns me. How did you manage to overcome this issue?

I didn't execute it very well but these are the four flu bricks that I laid.
The first is 7 inches and fits solely between the rear and front arch.
The next 3 bricks protrude above the two arches and are a full nine inches and cut/notched (wings) so they protrude 1 inch over each arch.

Maybe not so much "tied in" but they are transferring their weight and the bricks I lay on top of them onto the inner and outer arch.
Would have loved for the joint between the wings and the arches to be tighter.

[david s]

Whilst the form works well for efficient smoke extraction, the structural instability of lining up all those vertical joints rather than tying them in, concerns me. How did you manage to overcome this issue?

[UtahBeehiver]

Coming along nicely.

[Mongo]

My gift to my neighbors this fine Sunday morning is to not run my tile saw until noon. I've got 20 minutes for an update.
Put in about a 14 hour day yesterday.
I used the 'serpentine' flu design I saw in JRPizza 's build with a small mod to hopefully address the structural issues. My wife calls it the "Schwa".

Yes I bricked the flu form in. I have a plan.