Pizza Oven Floor cold

[Firapara]

Hi guys,

I am struggling with getting the pizza oven floor hot.The floor is made of clay firebricks 2,5" thickness. When I heat the oven I do not see any obvious heat escape problems, i.e. the dome and the slab underneath the oven are touch cold. But my floor never gets hot enough. Even baking a bread is a struggle as it will bake on top but the bottom will be white and raw.

Are there any obvious things I could check? Maybe the door is too big, or chimney pipe diameter is too big? Or something else?

Thanks

[SableSprings]

Welcome to the forum community! My first thought and question is - Do you have insulation between your cooking floor bricks and the slab the oven rests on? If not, the slab acts as a giant heat sink and depending on its thickness & size, would not necessarily be detectably warm for quite a while. The next question is - Have you cured the oven? The floor is the last area to have the moisture driven out by the curing fires and because of that will not get up to pizza temps until dried out. The last questions I have are - How long are you firing and how big a fire are you using to charge/heat the oven chamber? Your dome bricks should become hot enough to burn off the carbon/soot before pizza...black to white (clearing). Likewise, obviously, until the cooking floor clears as well, your bricks are not coming up to temp (as you've noted ).

Any and all of these issues may be your culprit...but I suspect, since you didn't mention insulation...it's either lack of insulation or inadequate firing that are the problem here. Since your dome is "stone cold", I think firing is a problem. Fortunately, the firing issue is simple to resolve - bigger fires for longer time...the insulation issue is a killer, since adding insulation underneath your cooking floor at this point is going to be difficult. I hope you're just not firing hot or long enough-there's a lot of mass in a brick oven & it takes a "fire from hell" sometimes to do the job.

[Firapara]

Thank you Mike,

The floor bricks sit on 1" vermiculite refractory bricks which sit on top of 1" of vermicrite. The Dome is insulated with 2" of ceramic fibre blanket. Yes, the oven has been cured well.

I probably do not heat it well enough for baking pizzas, but I still feel there is some other problem. As I mentioned, even baking bread is difficult, as bread only needs about 200C (400F)

[SableSprings]

Glad to hear your oven is insulated and I'm pleased I didn't offend you about the insulation/curing questions...just need to always clarify. FYI, I fire my oven overnight for baking bread the next day. I fill the chamber with wood about 10 pm & light it up. When the fire has gotten pretty well underway, I damp it down with my insulated door and let it burn. In the morning, I generally have cleared oven (and a floor "pile" of live coals)...oven temp (fully heat saturated bricks) of +700°F. I spread the coals out evenly and monitor the cool down using my door opening as a regulator for the cool down. My bread bakes tend to be around 2-3 in the afternoon and I like an oven temp of 575°F to start my baguette run (I usually do 15-20 loaves of mixed bread types from my one firing, batches of 5-8 done at a time).

Does your oven clear during your firing? As I said before, you've got to push in a lot of heat to the bricks to bring them up to temp and even longer burns are required to fully saturate the oven and be able to use it for extended cooking...even for lower temps You definitely should see oven clearing for pizza. Do you have an IR gun? It would be useful to take some temp readings of your oven brick inner surfaces over time (side walls and floor especially after fire/coals are out or removed) and it would be good to get some info on your firings (how much wood, how long, how quickly does it cool down after fire is out, etc.).

[Firapara]

Thanks again Mike,

I love your bread making technology, need to try this )))

I heat my owen for about an hour on a medium fire. Burn about 10kg of wood in my 70cm diameter oven. The oven does not clear after heating.