How long to preheat a Pompeii pizza oven?

[danhem]

I've found that, while I can heat the oven in 2 hours, it heats more effectively if I heat it for 4 hours with a smaller fire than at 2 hours with a large fire.

When you say ‘smaller fire’, how long would you say it takes for the dome to clear?

working on fire management at the moment and whilst I can get to pizza temp in a couple of hours, I can feel that the oven isn’t fully saturated and that i’d struggle to throw out any more than 6 pizzas. My dome clears after 90 mins.

I’m not so worried about heat sink - I see zero spike in temperature through the hearth floor and dome.

I guess my real concern is the oven floor. After a strong fire I’ll let the embers sit on the floor for 20 mins or so. After clearing the floor for pizza space, the floor temp drops from 850f to 650f pretty quickly. In an ideal world I’d like to maintain the floor at 750f for a sustained period.

I have 2.5” ceramic fiber board under the floor bricks and as said above, it doesn’t register an external heat sink until the following morning (where I see the temp spike by around 30f).

in this case I can only conclude that I haven’t saturated the floor with enough heat. I have been concerned about damp insulation but I’m around 20 full blown fires in now so assume that any damp has been driven out.

[MarkJerling]

That is because the firebricks are not highly conductive. Being slow to heat they’re also slow to cool making heat retention a useful characteristic.

Very true. Here's a link to my most recent temperature profile:

[david s]

That is because the firebricks are not highly conductive. Being slow to heat they’re also slow to cool making heat retention a useful characteristic.

[MarkJerling]

I've found that, while I can heat the oven in 2 hours, it heats more effectively if I heat it for 4 hours with a smaller fire than at 2 hours with a large fire.

[Neil.B]

I'm new to this but believe it depends on the size of your oven, thickness of your bricks (thermal mass) and insulation below cooking floor and around oven.
I think it takes about 2 hours for a 36"-42" oven with 4.5" walls... but could be wrong.

I'm building a 32" oven with 4" walls and 4.5" insulation, so i think it will heat up quicker.

[Nabukodonosor]

Hey guys, I hope you're all doing fine. I have a question. I am about to build my first Pompeii pizza oven. I was just wondering...how long do I need to preheat it before I can insert a pizza in it? I've read somewhere from a guy that owns one of these that it takes 4-5 hours to preheat it. Also, how much wood do I need? I'm just doing some calculations.