Stone Age Amerigo Help!

[pris1094]

Hi Everyone,

First, great forum and only wish I had found this 4 months ago. Long story short, just finished patio rehab and WFO. Installer chose the Amerigo kit as that was what his dealer had. I had no idea until using it that it just doesn't heat up, not to mention smoke issues. I've seen other posts about this product and how to rectify but ripping it out is not an option. I have a mason coming this week to look at re design and wanted to get some advice from the experts. Width ratio to Depth is not correct, unit currently is 36"d x 42"w and no insulation was used in build. That said, I don't need it to be as big as it is.

My thoughts are to rebuild inside of unit. First line back wall with 1" ceramic blanket and another layer of 2" split firebrick on back wall straight up so depth then is 35" deep. Then basically rebuild inside side walls into more of a dome shape using 2" of insulation and 4" firebrick to knock down inside to 30" wide. By doing this, I think it would virtually move the flue more to front of new dome to help with smoke issues and hopefully create more insulating material to help hold heat.

We have yet after many attempts be able to successfully cook a pizza as temps on floor fire brick cant get above 500 degrees. Other thoughts are adding a 2" floor Cordierite but again it has fire bricks on top of 3" concrete base so not sure this is much of the issue. Also looking at extending stack another 12" to help with draw.

Again, questions are if my plans will help and/or anything else I can do. Too expensive and nice to tear out at this point. Thanks for any suggestions!

[david s]

You must have insulation between your floor bricks and the supporting slab, otherwise you’ll lose heat by conduction there and never be able to either get the floor hot enough or maintain the required temperature. You may be able to remove the floor bricks, put down a layer of insulation and replace the bricks. The same goes for insulation over the dome. In fact you risk damaging the inner dome castings if you fire the oven as the inner face gets really hot while the outer face is in ambient air and the difference in expansion rates can be so great that cracking can occur. Insulating it will even out these differences. Lastly, all new ovens contain a lot of water that needs to be purged gently. One of the indicators of this is difficulty in keeping the fire going and the oven smoking excessively. Once dry the situation improves.

[pris1094]

Only issue with floor bricks is whole dome is sitting on them. Also dont like how they spaced each one with 1/4" grout line, seems to me you would want them butted up right next to each other? I have a mason coming to look at it, may have to tear top off and re build but just not sure pulling all the stone off to do this is feasable without breaking it. Thanks!