How to move a pizza oven-or not

[Indysailor58]

I started a thread a month or so ago looking for advice on how to move a pizza oven. All the advice seemed to be unanimous. Which was "don't". I would have to say that there was a paucity of personal experience in moving ovens. Since my daughter and I built a great pizza oven in spite of having no experience with any of the materials and overcoming lots of skeptical comments, you might guess that I am not about to take the advice of skeptics (or experts). I am sharing my experiences with the community so that if others need to move an oven, they will have an idea of what to do, or more likely what not to do.
Anyway, the house has to be sold and I figure I have nothing to lose. If I leave the oven the chances are the new owner won't appreciate it. If I move it and it breaks or I leave it, in either event I don't have an oven. And if we built it, we should be able to fix it, or at least salvage the cut fire bricks.
I have a goal of moving the oven for less than one thousand US dollars.
The oven in question is a 36 inch Pompeii with a stucco finish.My daughter and I finished it about a year ago. I am now more in the enjoying pizza mode, and less in the construction mode and that has influenced my thinking about moving the oven.
I thought about taking the oven apart to make the move more manageable, but I did not see any obvious place to dis-articulate the oven without creating a lot of work in reassembling it. Therefore I decided to move the whole thing including the pad as one unit. When we built the oven, the pad, the dry stacked block and the oven base were all tied together with re bar.
When my daughter (in college to be an engineer) roughed out the weight of the whole unit I was a bit staggered. About 11,500 lb. In my mind that ruled out any type of home built moving equipment. My new motto is, "Go big or go home". I decided that I was going to move oven with a construction crane.
Driving home one day I was passed by what I thought was the perfect piece of equipment. It was a crane mounted on a flat bed truck, so I could rent one piece of equipment to lift and haul the oven to it's new home in my future son in law's driveway about 5 miles away.
I contacted Zach, the crane owner and he came over and scoped out the job and announced that "I think I can lift it" if "I can get real close". I have to say I was not reassured by his comments. The crane rental for a half day is going to be about $500.
A new problem arose though. With the boom down he has 4 ft of clearance on his flat bed. Neither of us could figure how to make the oven fit on his truck. Fortunately, Enterprise Truck Rental had a flat bed that could handle a maximum payload of the exact same 11,500 lb I think that oven and base weigh. Whew! That is going to cost another $250.
I have attached a pre move picture of the oven.

[Indysailor58]

A couple of weekends ago I starting digging out under the oven so that we could pass the straps underneath that Zach the crane guy intended to use to hoist the oven. This job was a pain. The oven rests on about two inches of small river rock over compacted clay. I could jam my arm between the clay and the pad and work the river rock out, but my hand ended up looking like I had just tried to pet a bobcat. I worked from both sides. I had some small success trying to jet the stone away with a small garden hose, but that also was frustrating. No type of shovel or trowel really did the trick, either.
Finally, I created a tool with a small metal 90 degree bracket that I could easily work into the stone layer and push through. When I announced to a friend that I had invented a tool, he said he was glad to welcome me to the primates. Hey, us primates gotta do, what we gotta do.
I was then able to pass first a tape measure and then a rope under the slab in two locations. It was muddy and uncomfortable work.

[Indysailor58]

After some consideration, I did reach out for some help. I thought hard about who would be good at moving heavy awkward things without damaging them and it occurred to me that art museums must have to do this kind of work all the time.
I had a friend who connected me with Mike at the local art museum. I was particularly concerned that the vibrations, big and small, during transport would jiggle the mortar apart. He had some suggestions. He thought hay bales would work. I was a little concerned that securing the oven on a truck on top of hay bales would be tippy. but I throw the idea out there if anyone needs to try it.
He said that they used a material called Ethafoam at the museum. He had some they were going to discard because he had been already used. He gave it to me to place between the truck bed and the bottom of the pad to dampen vibrations.

[Indysailor58]

I have figured that the pad and the base of the oven are pretty sturdy since they are all tied together with re bar. The oven dome itself should be pretty sturdy since dome shapes tend to be stable. My main concern is keeping the oven from moving on top of the base.
My bicycle buddy Matt suggested using the plastic wrap that manufacturers and wholesalers use to keep boxes on palates during transport. It seemed to be a reasonable idea, and you can buy 1000 feet of the stuff at Lowe's for about $20. The picture below, shows me wrapping the oven before Matt and I embarked on a ride.
I have attached a picture of the wrapping and the completely wrapped product. I was wondering if I should take the chimney off prior to the move when my question was answered. As I was wrapping the plastic around it, it came off the oven. Dilemma solved.
Moving day is in two days.
Either this is going to be a great success, or a great story.

[david s]

I use old motorcycle tyres. Front tyres for trail bikes seem to work best as they're narrow,but large diam.

[SableSprings]

I hope all goes well for the move...or has gone well . My main concern was the "single strap" under the slab...not so much could it handle the weight, but would the oven tip as it was lifted? Also interested if the actual pull required to separate the slab from the ground beneath it would be significant. Sort of that "mud sucking" force variable...

Brilliant idea of using the plastic wrap! I agree with you completely about your decision to attempt this move...all the right reasons and as you said "Either this is going to be a great success or a great story." Sounds like a terrific win-win attitude that more people should take in this modern world!

[dakzaag]

Fork truck would be my tool of choice and leave the base, just move the dome with it's support slab. Surely you are done by now, let us know how it all went down.

[RandyJ]

That is a great thought Dakzaag. If you could separate the support slab from the base that would make the whole process much easier, and safer to transport.

Randy

[Indysailor58]

I did consider having the local "concrete surgeon" cut the table top off the base. But then I would have had to repour the base and worse have to reapply the decorative faux stone to a new block wall. That job was a pain that I did not want to repeat.
I had all the logistics figured out. The first job for the day was to pick up the truck at Enterprise. Fortunately they had the truck, unfortunately it had been returned without the key. And in fact the previous renter had decided to keep the truck. Enterprise did an awesome job in trying to fix the problem. They had someone get a truck from South Bend which is three hours away and deliver it my house. By the time I tried to reschedule the crane it was already at my house-which cost me $200.
I have attached a picture of the crane. According to the operator it can lift 60,000 pounds. The oven came in at 13,500 lb according to the crane's computer. Even so Matthew, the operator felt that this was a heavy lift. He was very easy to work with and did not rush me in any way, but of course I was paying by the hour. We had to change from a simple red iron ball to a block to lift the oven. The little ball weighed 200 lb!
The hoist it self went smoothly. There were two or three false starts as the oven slowly broke free. Since it was just me and the operator the number of pictures are limited, as I had to help position the oven on the truck. Once on the truck we snugged it home with tie downs. I then had to back the truck out of the yard. I initially did not appreciate how much the oven blocked my rear view until I slowly backed into a tree that was about 10 in in diameter. Fortunately no harm resulted to the tree, truck or oven. In spite of a spell of dry and warm weather for this time of year the truck left some ruts in the yard.
I took the drive slowly to the new destination 5 miles away. The oven weight exceeded the maximum payload weight for the truck by 2000 pounds, but no harm seemed to come from that. Even so, I left lots of stopping distance.
Placing the oven in the new location was a challenge. There was limited room to work with in the drive way and there were trees in the way. We parked the truck as close to the new site as possible and the Matthew lifted the oven off the truck but could not safely extend the boom over enough to place the oven in the desired location. He then set the oven down temporally and moved the crane so that we could move the truck out of the way and then reset the crane closer to the oven and the eventual final location. The last lift was money. I set the oven down on some left over concrete patio pavers so that if the oven needs another move in a few years I won't have to dig out underneath it. By the way it takes about 30-40 min to set up or take down the crane each time. And it was hard heavy work for Matthew.
When I removed the plastic there was no obvious damage. There were a few hairline cracks in the mortar in the oven, but they have been there previously. I was suprized that the weight of the oven did not crush the Ethafoam but it looked good as new.

[Indysailor58]

Here are photos from the initial hoist

[Indysailor58]

These are photos I took when the oven was placed in it's new location. The photo of the inside of the oven shows the hairline cracks.

[Indysailor58]

A few days after the move I mortared the chimney back into place. Tonight I test fired the oven, tragically without any time to make a pizza. The creosote burned off the walls and the oven floor reached about 800 degrees. I carefully felt around the dome and measured with an infrared thermometer but did not detect any dome hot spots. I think we made the move with almost no damage.
And now comes the annoying thing. After moving the dome without any apparent damage, I had climbed on top of the oven tonight checking for hot spots. After I satisfied myself that there were none, I carefully lowered myself down the side and in the process dislodged one of the decorative faux stones. It figures.
The oven is now about 10 inches higher than it was since the pad is now sitting on 2 inch pavers and it is not embedded in the ground. It seems like a comfortable height to cook. We'll see how it works out.
In the beginning of this post I said that it was either going to be a great move, or a great story. Fortunately, it was not much of a story. I did succeed in safely moving the oven a short distance for less than $1000. Hopefully, others needing to move an oven can work from what I did.

[SableSprings]

Thanks for the "final update" and pictures...looks like quite an adventure! Really glad that it was a successful move and that you didn't have to go much further with the overload. I'm pretty impressed that you and your daughter came within 2,000 pounds on the initial weight estimate. Too bad about the faux stone...but I suspect it will be pretty easy to attach back to the base. Probably could even take a squirt of construction glue to to the job.

Here's to good cooking in your future.

[Indysailor58]

Thanks for you nice remarks.

[Chach]

Very Cool...ANYTHING could be moved of you have the means and methods...Dont blame you for not wanting to build again.