Rocket pot oven

[deejayoh]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Read through that Green Rocket Oven site a little. This bit about how it works was interesting:

F - The heat from the fire cools slightly as it rises up the chimney, then strikes the bottom of the cooking platter, keeping it at the ideal cooking temperature (around 500 degrees Fahrenheit or 260 C). It then spreads out and heats the oven walls before it escapes the oven.

I can get my home oven to 500F. I can get my BBQ that hot for pizza too. But it's not really hot enough for great pizza.

[Laurentius]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Al,

Leave it up to you to start the NEW YEAR, with words of wisdom. Happy New Year, my friend.

[brickie in oz]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Psychdoc, you need to start charging your patients more per visit, the penny pinching to create a cooking area and the pics of your yard looks like you need more money.....

[david s]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Well then...
Rather than crafting a witty reply about my deceased fathers overbearing and critical advice I choose to accept all input with the assumption that it is intended to be constructive and given with a spirit of brotherly love. As a psychologist I deal with severe mental illness on a daily basis, so for me the distraction of a hands on project is plenty fun. Any result is a result, failure is always an option, remember to use sunscreen.

A pity, I would have enjoyed an amusing diatribe about an overbearing father. Apart from providing inventive ideas and valuable information, this forum can also become dangerously addictive. Fortunately as a practicing psycho you'll be able to self diagnose. This forum is probably overrepresented by folk with mental illness so you may even pick up a few new clients. Keep posting we're all enjoying this thread.

[PsychDoc]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Green Rocket Oven - The Green Rocket Oven employs several principles which make it very well suited to the task of cooking delicious pizzas quickly and efficiently. Once you see how simple they are you will wonder why no one has done this before (we

Please pardon my lack of url savvy. This is the idea. We shall see.

And the gratuitous picture.

[PsychDoc]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Well then...
Rather than crafting a witty reply about my deceased fathers overbearing and critical advice I choose to accept all input with the assumption that it is intended to be constructive and given with a spirit of brotherly love. As a psychologist I deal with severe mental illness on a daily basis, so for me the distraction of a hands on project is plenty fun. Any result is a result, failure is always an option, remember to use sunscreen.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program....

Despite what Albert Hammond may have told us, it really does rain in Southern California. But not today. So I got some work done.
Last course of bricks- that was yesterday
In my zeel to get work done I didn't take a lot of pictures but this is what tops the rocket portion of the oven. 6" pipe transitions to an 8x8 cake pan, $1, thrift store. Then two pieces of rebar making an x in the pan, corner to corner. That supports a 6" clay saucer, yup more flower pariphinalia. That about does it, all of that is to keep the direct blast of the rocket from scorching my pizza stone.
Okay, now we are on top of the bricks. The large clay saucer received some judicious slicing with a diamond blade in the grinder. Which works amazingly well by the way. So in the saucer is another standoff of metal, on top of that is a terra cotta tile from Home Depot, and finally the pizza stone. Whew.
I also decided to start flower pot oven version 2.1. So off to the depot for more pots. I went with a lower profile and swapped the new pot to the rocket stove and will use the deeper pot for oven 2.
Perhaps I will give that oven its own thread

Question, what is a minimum door hight? Pizza only

[shuboyje]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Roger,

My comments aren't meant to be patronizing, but they are pretty absolute on purpose. As much as you may see it otherwise I'm trying to help. I understand you are looking for a fun project and to try new things, but the ultimate fun will be when it works well won't it? I know you think you are doing something profoundly different then anything else, but when distilled down to it's core it is a bottom heat only oven like many others and will need the same features as others to have a balance of heat. If you look to the design of gas fired deck ovens and the ever popular little black egg(LBE) which are both bottom heat only ovens like yours that successfully cook pizza you will find two key features in both of them. A deflector of some sort to help buffer the heat from the bottom stone and a very low ceiling to keep the top heat as close to the top of the pizza as possible. Without both of those features(and even sometimes with them) you will end up with a charred bottom and a uncooked top.

I really think the LBE design is gonna be your best friend in working this out. On another pizza website you will find a 100 pages worth of info on that oven and the tweeks that have been developed over the past few years to really dial it in. You are changing the heat source from a gas burner to a rocket stove, and changing the oven chamber from a weber grill to a pot or some other form of masonry, but the concept remains the same.

[PsychDoc]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Thank you all for the input.
Hendrik - cheap is good, well sometimes. While the "black clay" looked interesting dirt is still dirt. Cob has been used with great success for many years so its nice that someone has dug it up and formed it into a pot for you. The pot I am using is 16", a shade over 40cm. Still only $8.
Shuboyje- low dome is defiantly the way to go. If a person is trying to use a single pot they need to balance sufficient side wall to allow a door for access and low dome hight to help reflect heat. And while I appreciate the input, your comments here and on another thread come across as absolute and somewhat patronizing. I'm sure your experience with authentic Neapolitan pizza and the associated ovens is great, I'm trying to have a little fun with an alternative method to cook a decent pie and maybe a bread stick. I have under $100 in this thing and its only that much because I didn't want to bother with the time to source materials. Not everyone has the time, space, talent, or treasure to construct authentic.
Now then... Heat on top, while I'm hoping the dome and design work as is, I may suspend a terra cotta tile above the pizza stone to reflect and radiate heat to the top of the pizza. Ia am using a tile under the stone as well as diffusers to avoid over heating the bottom.
Hopefully I will be able to get some more done today and post a pic.
Roger

[Hendrikwal]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Mighty intersesting results, i had no idea u could get that kind of heat from small rocket inside small oven like that. We have a lot of verry cheap terra cotta pots around here, i never seen t black ones, altough i know wich ones u mean, but the best of t best is for export in this country and local population is so poor they cant aford those i think, but i bought 5 big flower pots with 40 cm diameter for 5 dollar, so i can aford to screw things up and brake a few pots experimenting haha.
We also have a lot of bamboo. Wich makes great rocket stove fuel but crappy pizza oven fuel as it burns away like paper soaked in petrol.
Once i start building i wil post some fotos, at the moment they are building my foundation of my new house so i busy with that

[shuboyje]

Re: Rocket pot oven

I would personally leave the pots behind and get a kiln shelf. With bottom heat only ovens like you are attempting to build the top heat is always anemic compared to the bottom. To have any chance of balancing the heat you will need as low of a "dome" as possible. A kiln shelf set on top of a low brick wall would give much better results.

[PsychDoc]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Wiley, pardon my sarcasm, but the other reason for the door is access to the pizza! I will have a hole in the 'top' of the pot/dome for venting during fire up. Then I can cover the hole to retain heat.
Much of this is proof of concept and will likely be modified in "rocket pot mk2".

In other news I found a pottery shop that has 24" bowl shaped pots, 9-10" deep or so for $31! That may serve as a dome/form for future oven. Maybe over a soldier ring of bricks...?

[Wiley]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Am I missing something? Looks like you cut the bottom out of the pot...The 63 % height of door to interior of dome was for airflow within the "dome" with a fire within the dome. The exhaust fumes need to flow out the 63% opening and either into a chimney or to the wild blue.

But interesting thread, I like to see people thinking outside the box.

Bests,
Wiley

[PsychDoc]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Good question. The answer is yes and no, in theory. Yes the heat is all generated below the oven, however there is space around the entire "floor" that allows the hot rocket exhaust to enter the dome and then be reflected back to the top of the pizza. At least that's the theory.

[deejayoh]

Re: Rocket pot oven

Is the heat is only coming from the bottom of the oven in this design? It is going to be tough to cook the top of a pizza before the crust burns.

[PsychDoc]

Re: Rocket pot oven

A couple of answers, and a question or two.

Hendrik, I most have glossed over your first question, sorry. It looks like you wanted to know about early testing. So, here goes. I made a small rocket stove with soup cans- around 3" diameter. Chimney about 12" tall. I surrounded this with red brick- this was simply to hold a flower pot but may have provided some minor heat retention. Over the exhaust of the rocket I inverted a 12" pot that had been rotting in a small pond. (Nothing but the finest for me) the set an oven thermometer inside the pot. Within a few minutes I was at 5-600F. The tiny rocket stove, and my distractibility, didn't necessarily provide scientifically verifiable results.
Gulf, you may be interested in another trial I did. With a small pot set up as described above I had a temp around 400F. I wondered what might happen if I place a second larger pot over it for insulation. The temp shot up to 600+. You described various layers in your post. I thought about the same thing as a way to save time and maybe a few $$$. I think an insulating layer might be needed but takes away from the look.
Hendrik- do you think the wet weather contributed to your pipe decomposition?
Also I have seen "black clay" pots that are made in Vietnam. They are supposed to be high quality and fired at a high temp. You may have access to that type of pot. That might be a good dome, they are expensive around here.