Two Way Heat Idea for Pompeii Oven

[YOBCDarryl]

I am excited to find this forum and the plans that help answer so many questions. I have my spot picked out and have ideas of a corner pompeii oven with my pellet smoker next to it. I love the pellet smoker and would like others opinions and thought on two way source of heat.for the oven. I am thinking of adding a pellet hopper assembly to be added to the oven. Being new I am not sure just how hot a oven needs to be. The hopper heats up to 500 degrees. The hopper heat up my big smoker just fine and I think that it could even work better with a well insulated Oven.
Advantages could be burn different kinds of flavor pellets. Easy or lazy way to start up. Maintain steady heat if it is hot enough. When not using pellets a recessed steel plate or drop fire brick in hole.
Disadvantages: It not working. Not hot enough. Please let me know what you think good and bad.

[Gulf]

Darryl,

Welcome to the forum. I don’t think that it would be very cost efficient to bring a brick wood fired oven up to temp with pellets. Unlike an insulated steel chamber which heats up quick, a brick oven takes a lot of energy to charge the heat bank. The heat bank is the brick. They will be sucking BTU’s away from a pellet pooper (trying, to get up to temp) long after you are ready to put food in there. However, once heated, and the heat source goes out, the brick will retain the heat (seamingly infinately) much longer than a metal smoker.

For me, hardwood is free for the taking. With a brick barrow full of seasoned hardwood, I can fire the oven one time, and cook for the better part of a week. Cooking on the decline, my oven will hold the “low and slow” range for 12 to 16 hours. That is plenty of time for ribs or even brisket. Once you are familiar with your oven, cooking on the decline at any of the heat ranges yields plenty of heat control for any recipe.

I hear about some great results with the pellet smokers. I would love to have one. I am into stick/lump charcoal smoking. A lot of times, I finish up my low and slow cooks in the oven. I believe that meat only absorbs the "sweet blue" smoke up to a set internal temp. After that, it just needs heat to finish breaking down the collagen.

I am a fan of all types of wood fired cooking. I see the advantages of different types of cookers. But, I would be afraid to mess with the Pompeii oven's internal workings. The design, with only some minor improvements, has stood the test of time. I believe that if it ain’t broke (IMO), don’t try and fix it .

[RandyJ]

There is one member that built a offset fire box on to his pizza oven so he could also use it as a smoker. As to the pellet burner I don't think it has any where near enough heat to do much good unless you were trying to use it as a smoker. But it will not be able to generate enough heat to make pizza. For that you need to have a pretty big fire and then a bed of coles.

Randy