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Over the years i visited this forum for ideas on building anj oven. Last year i bought the Bertello (Napoli) oven. It's a small convenient back deck oven that used wood/pellets/charcoal or gas. I love it I turn it on, go inside to stretch out dough and by the time i'm ready its hot, 900+ at the back, 650 or so in the front. like most other products out there it can cook only one at a time. That's find if people cook their own pizza then eat. Except we all know that most of us end up being the chef and you're cranking out 8-10 pizzas and if you're say cooking them for dinner and you want to eat together, that doesn't fly. My buddy wants one too but i'm curious to try building one with these principles. We don't care about long term heat retention. like most of you purists your ovens can bake a turkey 3 days later, we don't care about that. We want 900F in under 30 minutes, and after we turn off the gas or let the wood die down, the ovens cool by morning. I've come to accept that you get one of two things, slow heating that lasts or fast heating that doesnt. there's no grey area, and we're fine with that. With that being said i've seen a ton of barrel pizza ovens that are inspiring but they use the round end as the entrance which makes for an awkward three foot deep oven. You can't really cook two if the back one's burning. Sure you could store your fire there and use the middle to cook, but we're back on the one pizza idea again. Barrels however do facilitate my other idea of plumbing in a custom pipe burner along the length to either aid with rapid heating or just use gas if you wish. Think of the Pizza Party Ardore just bigger. One guy on youtube had a slit along the side of the barrel so his surface was wide to accommodate two pizzas at once. he used refractory at the butts and along the dome. i like that idea. however you all know that for pizza, dome is best. Hence my idea:
carbon steel hemisphere (like those used for rustic fire pits) with a cut in the front to allow for the traditional flue and door. then line the outside with your refractory 5:1 and stucco that thing. So the structure has a quick heating surface that won't crack of the steel but the mild insulating properties of the perlcrete. Then the floor could be your firebricks cut OR a massive square pizza stone and you fill the rest in with perlcrete or high heat refractory. that makes for a replaceable insert, not a bad idea. I found square stones as big as 22x22. I think this design would cut down on weight a lot, and cost. I can get a 30" dome for 85 bucks and this is 1/4" thick walls, shipped to me. Nothing local from what i can find.
as for the burner addition, i'd still want one. instead of putting in the floor like the valparossi burner, i'd make one out of tubing (either copper or if that can't handle the tubing they make grill burners out of) and have it curve along the back side of the dome with a simple needle valve out side the oven for flame control. I have propane at the house plumbed and there's a free port at the back deck. A simple hose with quick disconnect fittings would suffice. Or maybe a curved burner isn't even necessary since the dome supposedly disperses heat evenly. I could just have a regular jet burner in there.
So far nothing on the market i've seen is like this. there are small convenient multi-fuel ovens like what i have but lack the capacity, large prebuilt ones for traditional WFO use, or DIY kits that still lean towards the long lasting heat potential for frequent use. There are the perlcrete "exercise ball" ovens that do get hot, but in two years basically fall apart and even those take a fair amount to heat up. The only upside to those is they're cheap to make so if you had to remake it every 5 years it's not the end of the world.
My concerns with this design are:
1. expansion of the metal cracking the perlcrete. All cast cracks and i'm fine with that, but I don't want ruining cracks.
2. rust. in theory if i season this thing like a cast iron pan then it should be fine, but residual outside moisture will eventually get in there. but is that a problem?
3. I could line the interior with domed brick or cast but the area will shrink and that negates the theory of the quick heating.
4. What if i just skip the perlcrete? leave it with high heat temp. or buy one dome slightly larger and layer it with ceramic fiber blanket.
Basically i want the convenience of the Napoli, Ardore, Roccbox, with the capacity and airflow of a dome. I want it all, is that too much to ask?
carbon steel hemisphere (like those used for rustic fire pits) with a cut in the front to allow for the traditional flue and door. then line the outside with your refractory 5:1 and stucco that thing. So the structure has a quick heating surface that won't crack of the steel but the mild insulating properties of the perlcrete. Then the floor could be your firebricks cut OR a massive square pizza stone and you fill the rest in with perlcrete or high heat refractory. that makes for a replaceable insert, not a bad idea. I found square stones as big as 22x22. I think this design would cut down on weight a lot, and cost. I can get a 30" dome for 85 bucks and this is 1/4" thick walls, shipped to me. Nothing local from what i can find.
as for the burner addition, i'd still want one. instead of putting in the floor like the valparossi burner, i'd make one out of tubing (either copper or if that can't handle the tubing they make grill burners out of) and have it curve along the back side of the dome with a simple needle valve out side the oven for flame control. I have propane at the house plumbed and there's a free port at the back deck. A simple hose with quick disconnect fittings would suffice. Or maybe a curved burner isn't even necessary since the dome supposedly disperses heat evenly. I could just have a regular jet burner in there.
So far nothing on the market i've seen is like this. there are small convenient multi-fuel ovens like what i have but lack the capacity, large prebuilt ones for traditional WFO use, or DIY kits that still lean towards the long lasting heat potential for frequent use. There are the perlcrete "exercise ball" ovens that do get hot, but in two years basically fall apart and even those take a fair amount to heat up. The only upside to those is they're cheap to make so if you had to remake it every 5 years it's not the end of the world.
My concerns with this design are:
1. expansion of the metal cracking the perlcrete. All cast cracks and i'm fine with that, but I don't want ruining cracks.
2. rust. in theory if i season this thing like a cast iron pan then it should be fine, but residual outside moisture will eventually get in there. but is that a problem?
3. I could line the interior with domed brick or cast but the area will shrink and that negates the theory of the quick heating.
4. What if i just skip the perlcrete? leave it with high heat temp. or buy one dome slightly larger and layer it with ceramic fiber blanket.
Basically i want the convenience of the Napoli, Ardore, Roccbox, with the capacity and airflow of a dome. I want it all, is that too much to ask?
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