Troubleshoot pizza brick oven

[yolopizza]

I made a pizza oven out of "fireplace bricks".

The inside dimensions are 24" deep by 20" wide and 10" high (60cm x 51cm x 27cm).

I made an intense wood fire in it for about an hour (like on the photo), then moved the fire to the side, swept the ashes and threw my pizza in.

It failed surprisingly badly, because it was definitely not hot enough in there.

My question, obviously, is: where does the problem come from?
Is it OK to use standard bricks like this, how intense/long should the fire, what about the dimensions, especially the opening, should I put a door and/or a chimney, should the fire still burn when you put a pizza or embers can be enough, would charcoal be a good idea, etc?

Once again, I'm surprised it failed so badly, the temperature was probably about 120°F (50°C) in there.

Thanks

[david s]

1.Too much heat loss, insulate under and over will help enormously
2, Keep fire going on the side when cooking pizzas.
3. Make oven mouth smaller. Door should be around 63% of internal height. Also make door narrower to reduce heat loss, but not too narrow to impede working the oven.
4. Forget the flue its only purpose is to keep the smoke away from your face.

[SableSprings]

You're pretty lucky the box oven didn't actually get to pizza temps...because your wood pallet would have ignited

The bricks have to absorb heat from the fire and without any insulation, the outside of the bricks will bleed off heat. It would be tough to get the entire brick box up to pizza temps...again, it would have started your base on fire long before cooking temps. You might look at the pizza units sold for BBQs if you can't afford or don't have the time to build a masonry/brick/cast oven. What you've got here is an accident ready to happen...please don't try this again without a serious fire/heat proof platform for the bricks. Just think, if this loose stack of hot bricks collapses or gets hit from the side...are you ready to safely pick up and secure them? I've got some relatives that took a class in Wisconsin that promoted a simple stacked oven like yours. It can work, but not very efficiently (or safely IMHO).

The Pompeii and vault ovens all have lots of insulation completely surrounding the heat storage material (masonry/bricks/cast refractory). This allows the fire to keep adding heat to the oven's heat storage material. Most of us can bring a pizza oven up to temp in 1.5-2.5 hours, but again we've got insulation working for us and a design of the internal fire chamber that maximizes the heat transfer surface area from the fire. Seriously, if you want a quick, inexpensive pizza oven, check the ones sold for BBQs. I've seen several for under $150 (US) and some even under $100. If you're really interested, look at the Treasures Hidden in the Archives (second sticky thread of the Newbies forum section), link below.

https://community.fornobravo.com/for...n-the-archives

Good Luck

[jonv]

What he said ^

Plus, seriously, don't. You've got what appear to be loosely stacked bricks, on their sides. It's not robust - if that lot collapses you could be heading to the burns unit. If it got hot enough to burn anything.

A non-combustible base, a bit of insulation, a smaller opening, and some mortar!