Is it worth doing?

[scottz]

Hi,
My WFO has always had some heat loss through the centre top of the render. When you place your hand on top when it is pizza hot inside, you can feel the warmth...you wont scold yourself but you do feel the heat...simular to a black painted wall that has been in the sun, or not quite as bad. Anyway, I rang up the people I bought my kit from to get some fire mortar to repair some small internal cracks, the guy mentioned that he remembered my oven having some heat loss issues. The new kits they have, have a more insulating blanket that will basically solve any heat loss issues I have...and he will provide the blanket and any extra render I need free of charge. The only thing problem is, I will either need to do another blanket/render cover over my oven which I dont think can work as I have my area tiled or I can chip away all my render, take off the old blanket and start again...the same problem with the work area is I have all the tiles down. Yes the oven losses some heat, but I can still slow cook over 8 - 12 hours maybe more and the oven does keep pizza hot quite well.

So my question to you all is....is it worth it??? To solve my heat loss problem, which to be honest doesnt really affect my oven in the way I use it, will require a fair bit of 'dicking' around. I have read on here about some of you that live in areas that receive snow, firing up the WFO and having no snow melt. Is that really needed, or is it an over kill?? Any advise you guys have would be great!!

Cheers
Scott

[lwood]

Re: Is it worth doing?

What is the internal oven temp after 12 hours with the door on? Do you have a good insulating door?

[roobqn]

Re: Is it worth doing?

If you are happy with the way the oven performs, I would pass. You have gotten to know your oven and how it works and how you can work with it.
Not knowing what will happen in the future though with heat loss and what that might (or might not) do to your oven, you may want to take him up on it and store it for future use.

[Neil2]

Re: Is it worth doing?

Sometimes heat at the top of a properly insulated oven is caused by steam - residual or accumulated moisture being driven out.

I have a small (1 inch) vent at the top of my dome that communicates through the stucco to the insulation layer.

[scottz]

Re: Is it worth doing?

Thanks for your thoughts...yes, he said the offer is always there if I wish to re-do it, at no charge! And I would have done it straight away, but I just finshed doing all the tiles around the oven, so after 12 months it is finally finshed. I'm sure doing the render and insulation again would mean knocking off the tiles and doing that again! But I think your right about the oven roobqn...I know my oven now and it performs excellent for what I want it to do. As for residual heat after 12 hours, its like I said before...when I put the beef roast in at 10.30pm, the heat was 280 degrees C. When I took it out at 8am the next morning the gauge on the door was still showing 120 degrees C. So I think I will keep his offer in my head incase it gets worse, but for now I will fix the small cracks inside and see where we go in the future. Thanks again for your thoughts

Scott

[OscarA]

Re: Is it worth doing?

Hi Scott

If it was me I would take the offer and store the blanket and render.
The offer is there and although he says the offer is always there that doesn't mean he'll always be there to honor it.
You might decide down the track to bake bread in the morning after the previous days firing and find the oven isn't up to the task without relighting it.
I'm still building mine but I would like to cook for example pizza for lunch, roast for dinner and bake bread the next morning. Whether I actually do it remains to be seen.

[scottz]

Re: Is it worth doing?

Well...we have decided we are going to do it (and here I was thinking I had finshed my oven!!). The thing to work out now is do we chip away all the render and start again (not really want to do that one....) or blanket/wire and render over the top of what I have already...the only problem with that one is the lack of space we may have. These pics show how much space I have left.

Have been told rendering over tiles is not problem. So now I am just waiting on alfresco ovens thoughts on what I should do.

Thanks for everyones ideas.

Scott

[lwood]

Re: Is it worth doing?

I would go over the existing not chip off the old stuff. So it's a thiner in the back of the oven. It's only a small area. I would go right up to the splash plate and be done with it. It's in the back of the oven anyway and nobody will ever see it.

[scottz]

Re: Is it worth doing?

Its done!!! And wasnt that a fun little exercise! I started off with a grinder and a dimond blade cutter and cut up the render into sections that could be handled. After much hammering and swearing when the hammer hit my hand/thumb instead of the chisel, I pulled the bits off being careful not to damage the tiles or myself.

With the outside layer off, I found a few cracks that I repaired. On went the new foil blanket and the new, and so much better, insulation. The company gave me heaps so I doubled up the blanket this time. On went the chicken wire and the first coat of render followed by the second the following morning.

The oven looks a touch bigger from the bigger insulation...but I think it looks better than before. The real test will be when I fire it up and see how it goes.

Cheers to everyone for the ideas.
Scott