Starting my build

[almondsurf]

Re: Starting my build

Thank you so much guys! The video helps me to see the consistency of the mix. I probably would have added more water if I had not seen that video. I will try to get it close to that 1/3 per David S.

David S: Do you think that a 2" dome is thick enough when cased? Or, does it need to be 3"+ thick?

Thanks again guys!!!

[SableSprings]

Re: Starting my build

Sorry for the thread highjack almondsurf...

...Regarding "belly button" height, I have designed (but not built - that happens in two months) the oven floor to be at mid-chest height (about 10" higher than belly button height). I've read in lots of forum's that "I wished I had made it higher", so I'm thinking the route of going a bit higher - especially given the angle that we have to bend at the waist. My plan is to use the FB Cucina stand (40") placed on top of a 6" slab (totalling 46"), 4" of perlite / portland mix @5:1, (50"), 2" of FB CalSil board on top of that (52"), and then the oven hearth 54"). I'm 5' 10 (and a bit), but 57 and can no longer bend like gumby the way I used to...your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
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Cook4Fun, I don't know how big your oven is going to be, but the higher you go, the more you will limit easy access into the oven. And it's exactly the same problem if you go too low. Putting pieces of wood into a center or back fire or lifting a dutch oven and pushing it back will be a little more difficult the higher/lower you are from your normal working range...but you probably won't hit your head on the entry arch as often as I do and there are lots of tools to help move things around in the chamber. The belly button height recommendation is just my opinion of the optimum height for most folks. Loading wood, moving food items (and their container pots) around the chamber, and cleaning out the ash are things I would think about when determining the hearth height. Since you're sounding comfortable with a slightly higher hearth than mine...no problems, remember your oven is uniquely yours.

During construction, make sure you've got a sturdy ramp of some sort to move all the materials up to the oven construction zone. That can be a real challenge to move buckets of insulation perlcrete into the form as well as the mortar and bricks up to the platform...any younger folks around that you can do a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn routine on?

As long as you are comfortable with working a peel and doing the oven firing processes at a higher level than "belly button height", it will work just fine. (As an aside, I did buy a 12" cast iron frying pan for making brick chicken soon after I built the oven. Unfortunately, I could barely maneuver it once I put the pan--filled with flattened chicken and two bricks--onto the oven landing...I was so afraid of sliding on my firebricks and damaging them, that I was trying to lift it back into place instead of just sliding it. At the time I felt that I had built the hearth too low!)

One comment about the foundation slab you're planning on putting on top of the FB Cucina...I think 6" of reinforced concrete is overkill. Most of us only have slabs of 4" or so. If you reduced that to 4", I think you'd still be good at a final 52" height.

p.s. I'm just under 6' tall and almost 64 now. I certainly got a chuckle out of the Gumby comment --thanks for the smile

[david s]

Re: Starting my build

David S: Do you think that a 2" dome is thick enough when cased? Or, does it need to be 3"+ thick?

Thanks again guys!!!

it depends what you want your oven to do, but if you are not planning on baking bread for the neighborhood then 2" is perfectly adequate for a family oven. Most manufacturers seem to make their castings around this thick.

[cook4fun]

Re: Starting my build

SableSprings, thanks for your email. I've purchased an oven here in Germany and will build it in the States, from Valoriani (mfg in Italy). Not nearly the size or capacity of yours, but something that will fit well for our situation.

FVR 110cm

Thanks!

[mrchipster]

Re: Starting my build

There are many comments on the forum related to the height of the oven floor. When I decided on where to put mine I found that rarely, people were unhappy with floors that were to high, but people often complained that their floor was to low.

I placed my floor 4 inches above my BB at 44 inches above the ground. I am 5-7.5 and find it easy to move things inside the oven and I do not need to stoop down to see anywhere in the oven. Next time you are in a pizza shop ask to see how high their oven are. They are always high or higher - never low.... Just my two cents.

[cook4fun]

Re: Starting my build

mrchipster,

Chip,

Greatly appreciate your two cents...sounds like I'm on the right path (thought process, ie; higher is better than lower)...I'll take a look at the drawings again with your thoughts in mind!

It's the journey...not just the destination, that makes this fun.

[mrchipster]

Re: Starting my build

mrchipster,

Chip,

Greatly appreciate your two cents...sounds like I'm on the right path (thought process, ie; higher is better than lower)...I'll take a look at the drawings again with your thoughts in mind!

It's the journey...not just the destination, that makes this fun.

Hold a peel, rake, ash shovel and some cast iron pans/pots at various heights and think about accessing areas 50 - 60 inches away from where you are standing. You can do this with boxes and books stacked on your kitchen counters. It will help a lot. Remember you will be viewing and working through a half circle tunnel that is very close to you.

Attached are the work ends of my pot moving tools. The top one works great one hook pushes the other pulls on the loop handles of cast iron pots and pans.

[SableSprings]

Re: Starting my build

Hold a peel, rake, ash shovel and some cast iron pans/pots at various heights and think about accessing areas 50 - 60 inches away from where you are standing. You can do this with boxes and books stacked on your kitchen counters. It will help a lot. Remember you will be viewing and working through a half circle tunnel that is very close to you.

Chip, I think yours is the best solution to the personal issue of "How high should my hearth be?" I think the range of options and inches high is very personal and variable, so my "Belly button high" is really just a starting point. Doing actual practice with day-to-day oven operation simulation as you suggested is a fabulous way to differentiate what you think will work and what actually WILL work! Great input!

[almondsurf]

Re: Starting my build

it depends what you want your oven to do, but if you are not planning on baking bread for the neighborhood then 2" is perfectly adequate for a family oven. Most manufacturers seem to make their castings around this thick.

Thanks David S. I was hoping I didn't have to cast this thing 5" thick.

[almondsurf]

Re: Starting my build

Interim Oven:

Last night was Pizza night at our house. I thought I'd post a few pics of my interim pizza oven that works quite well if you can't build an oven or if you just want "like oven" quality pizza. I've been doing this for at least 10 months. This grill method works a heck of a lot better than a stone in the standard in-home oven.

Below is 6 standard 1/2 fire bricks rested atop of my grill. Foil is placed in the back vent so that the heat will stay in the grill. When fully heated, I can sometimes get it to 650 degrees or so, but usually around 600. The pizza comes out great.

(see next post for peel)

[almondsurf]

Re: Starting my build

The only issue with the grill method is the difficulty of placing the pizza exactly on the bricks (if your making 15" pizzas like I do).

I had to design a conveyor belt type peel that will allow me to place the pizza right where I want it. I actually decided to build this after a meltdown of sorts. My regular peel kept sticking or sliding the pizza off the end of the bricks. One night after a particularly difficult time, I smashed up the pizza, threw it into the garbage, stormed into the garage, and stayed there late into the night. I didn't emerge until the product was finished. Now I have a peel that works great every time.

I got the idea from the 'super peel'. I used a scrap piece of MDF I had laying around; I used duct cloth as the fabric (which is just like pastry cloth / found at Joann's); Shelf liner under the duck cloth (so it will slide easier and not get the wood wet); a dowel as a bar to hold onto while sliding the pizza on and off, office clips to hold the dowel and cloth in place.

I have a friend who is great at sewing, so I asked her to sew a loop to slide the dowel through, and sew around all edges so they don't fray (she called it some fancy edged sewing technique but I couldn't tell you what that is). The top side starts to blacken over time as the flour from the pizza burns from sliding the pizza into the bricks.

I thought I'd post this as it may help someone else get good oven type pizza without the oven. (this might even belong in another thread???)

(see prev. post for grilling the pizza)

[cook4fun]

Re: Starting my build

almondsurf, it looks like a terrific and well thought out plan. Mine will be (hopefully) a lot simpler, using the FB metal stand, throw on some concrete, then vermicrete, FB CalSil, and then the oven, which is in pieces / parts that I will assemble, then cover with layers of vermicrete and finally stucco...I start in 3 months when I return to the USA !

[almondsurf]

Re: Starting my build

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the tip on mixing the perlite and cement before adding the water. This stuff was SO much easier to mix than all of the readymix cement I've been mixing in the wheelbarrow. It was like shuffling around a wheelbarrow full of popcorn. It didn't help that it was a windy day though. I used a 5 gallon bucket to get the correct ratios (5:1 perlite:cement; 3:1 perlite:water). The form I made was out of 2x4's, pickets, and cardboard.

I made this insulation layer 6" thick x 40" wide: 32" inside the dome; 2" refractory cast layer; 2" ceramic blanket layer.

I layed this on Saturday, have it covered with a tarp (so it doesn't dry too fast). I checked it Sunday but wonder how it will hold the weight of the oven? It seems to compress without too much pressure.

Was I supposed to smash the pcrete down / pack it into the form??? I did a little but didn't want to brake all the little balls of perlite, so I did a light pack and screeded it with a 2x4.

Also, Do I need to have a concrete form bordering this pcrete layer (like in my design drawings), or can I just build right ontop of this w/o needing to hold the pcrete in place?

[almondsurf]

Re: Starting my build

By the way, this insulation material is really weird stuff...you'll think in two days that you screwed up and then in 4-6 days it firms up enough to remove the forms. It will always be crumbly, but it has great compression strength and will easily support the hearth bricks & dome casting--so, no worries.

I just read back through the posts and feel a little better about the compression issue. Thanks SableSprings, I hope your right.

[SableSprings]

Re: Starting my build

Was I supposed to smash the pcrete down / pack it into the form??? I did a little but didn't want to brake all the little balls of perlite, so I did a light pack and screeded it with a 2x4.

Also, Do I need to have a concrete form bordering this pcrete layer (like in my design drawings), or can I just build right ontop of this w/o needing to hold the pcrete in place?

I think it looks good...and you did right with a light pack/tamp/screed. Do you remember hearing "the amount of pounds/sq inch exerted by a woman's high heel is far greater than that of an elephant's foot". Although you can push a finger into green perlcrete, you won't be able to push in a firebrick--same principle.

Because the compression is good but the strength is not, the edges will be a little "fragile". My brother-in-law simply dug out an inch around the edges of the perlcrete slab while it was still soft and filled it in with mortar. When we took off the form, the edges were much more durable that way. For the same reason, I would put a wedge/ring of mortar around your perlcrete after removing the form to protect it (as you'd planned) or just dig out the perimeter & fill with mortar as we did.

After the week of curing, we removed the form and put an inch of sand on top to help lay/tamp the hearth bricks flat & level. As I mentioned earlier, I wish I would have cut the outer hearth ring bricks to fit inside the dome instead of the dome being laid on top of the hearth perimeter. We did apply some mortar around the edges of the hearth bricks simply to contain the sand during the build.

Hopefully, the pictures will help explain this a bit more clearly.