Large WFO in India

[1 strover]

Greetings from this small and beautiful town of Panchgani in India,
I run a pizza and sandwich place .
On busy days we do about a 1000 12 inch pizzas a day and the peak hours are doing about 130-170 which is difficult for my two double decker tastiest ovens to keep up, we also do sizzling brownies so the brownie plates which are cast iron also take up room for about 2 pizzas in the oven at all times,
Now to make it easier to get the 200 pizzas per hour I am building a big wfo with inner dimensions of 84 wide and 96 wide with a dome height of 18 inches,
As I keep a little busy running my other businesses I have hired help for building the wfo, these people are used to building furnaces for boilers and other industrial applications so they are comfortable working with castable and the fire bricks.
Now for the oven we are adding 2 doors in the front as it would make it easier for my staff to operate as for not going for the igloo style and going for the barrel style was a choice I made as I also make about 200 5lb loafs of bread every morning which are used for my sandwiches and also that it was difficult having 2 doors on a round base in the place I had planned . And that
was amongst the main reasons for building a rectangular base rather than an igloo. But one plus is that the back of the oven will be haf an igloo so I would haves rounded backend. Is all be posting some pictures soon of the work we have started, any suggestions are most welcome as I am open to suggestion that will make my life easier and help me avoiding headaches in the future.
Thank a ton in advance.

[brickie in oz]

Re: Large WFO in India

I cant wait to see pics of the ovens, old and new.

[scott123]

Re: Large WFO in India

1Strover, let me get this right, you've never built a WFO, you've hired other people who've also never built a WFO and you're planning on building an 84 x 96 barrel vaulted oven with an 18" dome height?

It's one thing for a first time oven builder to build an oven in their back yard, make a few mistakes and learn through these mistakes, but in a commercial setting, in an oven of that size, to not have someone with large oven building experience involved is crazy and possibly even dangerous.

An oven like this takes major engineering know how to deal with the massive lateral forces involved. This is not like building a furnace.

And that's building the oven. The pizza making side also has issues to consider. Have you ever worked a WFO? It's nothing like a deck. You need major thermodynamic know how to run a WFO in a commercial setting- and that's a well built WFO. Getting consistent high volume pizzas out of a WFO takes months, possibly even years to master.

If you're doing 1000 pizzas on good days, then why complicate your business model with a WFO? If you really want to avoid headaches, just get another deck.

[1 strover]

Re: Large WFO in India

here are the first five pictures from day one
we did a whole lot on the first day ,
we made the base for the oven . laid some natural hard rock tiles on the base , then we laid bars and tied them up for the castable on top of the stone platform and we also poured the castable

[1 strover]

Re: Large WFO in India

here are a few more pictures from the first day of the build.
in these pictures you see us pouring the castable and leveling it

[1 strover]

Re: Large WFO in India

here are a few more pics this is day 2 the castable is in place and we start laying the hearth in a herringbone pattern,
after that we built the side walls which will ride to a height of 9 inches from the cooking surface,
you can also see the arch support form i made so i can build the arch in it and once the keystones are placed ill drop it down and slide it forward.

[1 strover]

Re: Large WFO in India

here again a few pictures of
the arch support form ,the side wall completed an ready for filling with quick set castable.
then the castable poured and finally starting to build the arch for the dome of the oven,
in hindsight i wish i built a bigger form so that i didnt have to slide forward, if it were the size of the oven i could have just built the whole dome and kept the wooden cast in there and burnt it later.

[1 strover]

Re: Large WFO in India

1Strover, let me get this right, you've never built a WFO, you've hired other people who've also never built a WFO and you're planning on building an 84 x 96 barrel vaulted oven with an 18" dome height?

yes u got that right i havent built one but the people hired generally build wood fired boilers for industrial applications .

It's one thing for a first time oven builder to build an oven in their back yard, make a few mistakes and learn through these mistakes, but in a commercial setting, in an oven of that size, to not have someone with large oven building experience involved is crazy and possibly even dangerous.

yes i do agree but i wanted to build one so that my customers could have a choice of which pizza they want a wood fired or a gas fired one ,

An oven like this takes major engineering know how to deal with the massive lateral forces involved. This is not like building a furnace.

took care of that have a big team of structural engineers form my construction firm and they have given me an ok

And that's building the oven. The pizza making side also has issues to consider. Have you ever worked a WFO? It's nothing like a deck. You need major thermodynamic know how to run a WFO in a commercial setting- and that's a well built WFO. Getting consistent high volume pizzas out of a WFO takes months, possibly even years to master.

i have worked a wfo but for a very short while, but am in the process of poaching an employee form another pizzeria a few hundred kilometers away, they have been using a wfo for the past decade and and this guy has been working there for about 6 of those 10 years.

If you're doing 1000 pizzas on good days, then why complicate your business model with a WFO? If you really want to avoid headaches, just get another deck.

really dont know the answer to that, may be because i dont like using all that fossil fuel...

[brickie in oz]

Re: Large WFO in India

Very nice build, it should work great as a commercial oven.
Are you insulating over the top?

:-Edit
What sort of mortar are they using, is it a bought product or made on site by them, if made by them what is it?

[scott123]

Re: Large WFO in India

1 Strover, sorry, I jumped to some conclusions before I knew the full story. It sounds like you have the bases covered better than I thought. I also wasn't aware how far into the project you are- at this point, there's obviously no backing out. I'm still a bit concerned that you have no one with oven building experience involved in this project, but, hey, it looks like it's almost done, so let's see how it performs.

Are you making two different pizza doughs? I didn't mention it earlier, but that could be another issue- your deck oven dough may not work all that well at the (most probably) higher heat of the WFO.

How are you insulating the hearth?

Regarding the environmental impact of gas/electric deck oven vs. wood, yes, the deck oven is burning fossil fuel, but, from a pollution standpoint, the WFO is belching out many many times more smoke.

[brickie in oz]

Re: Large WFO in India

A wood fired oven is supposed to be carbon neutral in that you can plant more trees to make up for the fuel burnt, something you cant do to offset fossil fuel use.

[david s]

Re: Large WFO in India

It looks like there is no insulation under the floor bricks. You may regret that decision, unfortunately it's probably a bit late now to retro fit it.

[1 strover]

Re: Large WFO in India

brickie in oz, thanks a ton
yes i would be insulating the top with a coat of thermoset followed by 2inches of insulating blanket followed by a 6inch fiberglass blanket, hope thats enough.

[1 strover]

Re: Large WFO in India

david s,the castable under the herringbone pattern is a refractory concrete used to insulate larger furnaces again i hope that should be ok,

[1 strover]

Re: Large WFO in India

had a quick question, i had planned for 2 small doors opening to a height of14 inches so that i could use more of the space but do you'll think that it would be better to have just one wider door opening with the chimney right over it?