Two tiered ovens? Safety? and Quickest time to build a pizza oven.

[jeanine]

Hello,

I have a team of men who want to built an indoor pizza oven as quickly as possible. I have a couple questions before we start the process:

1. What is, realistically, the fastest time we can build an oven? (no fancy surrounding structures)

2. What is the average cost of building a 36" pizza oven?

3. What is the hottest temperature a pizza oven can withstand?

4. How close to the walls can we build the oven for it to be safe?

5. My manager would like to have a two-tiered oven -- fire on the cooking floor with a steel plate structure above it, which we could use to cook eggs and other such things as well as pizza rather than cooking on the same surface as the fire (does that make sense). Have you ever seen such a structure? Is it feasable?

Thank you in advance for all your help.
Cheers!
Jeanine

[clg763]

Re: Two tiered ovens? Safety? and Quickest time to build a pizza oven.

I am very new to all this but I am curious as to your thoughts behind the two tiered idea. The doorway to access the oven limits a lot of what you can do inside, building a larger doorway lets a good deal of heat out and can create issues with the overall performance of the oven in cooking pizzas. I would imagine it would be very difficult to get at a lot of the things on the second tier and it would be difficult to manage the things on the bottom tier due to the more confined space. I definitely couldn't see myself doing eggs well on a second tier in a pizza oven, especially during the rush of a restaurant service which it sounds like you are looking to do. With a restaurant, you want to keep things as simple and manageable as possible, I foresee this being very tricky.

You are going to be walking the line between time and money, you can spend the money on a prefab modular oven and be rolling right away. Doing more of it yourself will save you cash but take a lot more time. If you want to do everything yourself, it would most likely take several months to execute the project from start to finish if you have not done it before. On the other hand, you could order a modular oven and be rolling fairly quickly, probably less than a month if plan out your schedule well.

I cannot speculate the cost of things over there as it is very different than here, the cost of the total install is likely going to be more than the cost of the oven itself. Once you insulate the oven, ventilate it and get everything in installed, you will be surprised to see how it all adds up.

Pizza ovens can withstand higher temperatures than pizzas or any other food can, of course, it is possible to design on with less conventional materials and run into issues but most of the ovens I see are designed to withstand temperatures around 1000C. Just because it can withstand that, doesn't mean that you should push it that high though, like anything, it isn't designed to pushed to its operating limits. If you are concerned about getting it hot enough to cook a certain dish, don't be, they can be fired hot enough to turn anything edible to dust in seconds.

The distance to the walls is entirely dependent on the insulation you use, more expensive, high quality insulation can allow ovens to placed very close to walls. This is all very speculative until you start pricing things out and looking into your space constraints.

[deejayoh]

Re: Two tiered ovens? Safety? and Quickest time to build a pizza oven.

Seems like a two-tiered oven with a steel plate would interrupt the convection flow - which is kind of the reason for building a dome, isn't it?

[DTHERR]

Re: Two tiered ovens? Safety? and Quickest time to build a pizza oven.

I have a friend who is a contractor in Spain told me that it takes 2 men 2 weeks to build WFO

[azatty]

Re: Two tiered ovens? Safety? and Quickest time to build a pizza oven.

It sounds like the oven is for commercial use, so you might be best-served to look at some of Forno bravo's commercial ovens. Set up time is a lot lower.

Concerning the Pompeii oven, folks routinely heat it past 850 F. It could go higher, but there isn't a great benefit. My insulation will start breaking down around 1900 F, which is hotter than you will ever need unless you're melting metal.

Construction time varies based on the construction method, size of the oven, and skill of the mason. You also need time to cure the concrete and mortar. You can set hearth bricks, build a sand dome, set dome bricks around it, then pour refractory concrete over it. You'd be done in a few days. I have a friend who says that he can build a dome in a single day using that method.

[Tscarborough]

Re: Two tiered ovens? Safety? and Quickest time to build a pizza oven.

The actual oven dome is a one day build for a mason and a helper, plus another day for the entry/chimney. Add one day for stand and hearth slab, another for the insulating slab, and the minimum is about 5 days for a competent masonry crew for a minimally fenestrated oven. That is why they are so expensive to have built.

[clg763]

Re: Two tiered ovens? Safety? and Quickest time to build a pizza oven.

In construction, the amount of time required to complete a job is not projected by the sum of all the man hours, but rather by the overall schedule. For example, it takes time to design, source materials, build and overcame all of the obstacles in the project, many of those stages require things to go back to the design phase and go from there all over again.

I am not saying the crew of skilled masons couldn't get you an oven up and running in under a week, however, it is unrealistic to do this yourself without prior experience. From my reading on the builds here, if a person is REALLY moving, they get their project done and start making pizzas in about a month.

[jeanine]

Re: Two tiered ovens? Safety? and Quickest time to build a pizza oven.

Thanks for all your help everyone. Much appreciated.