Smoke Problem with Neighbors - NEED HELP!

[gugahulk]

Guys I need your help. I live in Miami and houses are close together. I build this awesome pizza oven and I love it, but my wife and neighbors are complaining about the smoke. I am a nice guy and don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. Any suggestions on how to get rid of the smoke? a friend of mine recommend an air mover? Any other ideas?

[scott123]

Extend the height of the chimney so it's above your house and your neighbor's house.

[gugahulk]

That is not an option as its already as high as my county permits it.

[scott123]

A free standing chimney will have height limitations, but if you run it so that it connects to the house, then you can then go up.

[Tscarborough]

Start with a very small fire that gets hot quick and slowly build it up. A smoking fire is not a good fire anyway.

[Gulf]

To me the key to keep from alarming the neighbors is to reduce that stinking white smoke. Starting a small hardwood fire and building it up slowly should at least give off only give that great smelling blue smoke .

Keep the tender bundle very small and close to the entry, so that it can get plenty of air. I usually start a small fire in the entry and then push it pack just inside the door after it is going pretty good. This seems to also help preheat the flu. That will help start a draft and get that smoke column rising higher and faster. Once lit, slowly add small kindling (twigs size) and don't make the bundle any larger until there is a hot coal bed. Keep adding small kindling, and only increase the size of the wood as the fire can accept it. Too large of, or too much (even well seasoned) wood in a small fire is just asking for smoke. Later, when the oven is closer to temp you can add larger wood and have very little smoke. As the fire and coal bed get larger, push it a little further back in to the oven. Just a little at a time as the fire can accept it.

You may speed the process of getting a good coal bed by lighting some lump charcoal in a charcoal chimney. Lump charcoal is very close to being pure carbon. Most of the impurities that cause smoke have already been burned away. I usually start lump charcoal in my entry for the same reasons as above. I wear a grill glove when dumping the charcoal just inside the door. Be careful. If the neighbors don't like the smell of hardwood smoke they surely wont like the smell of scorched arm hair . Since smoke is the issue you might try lighting the lump with a weed burner . You might even try lighting the kindling with it.


If your oven is still wet and this your first drying fires. You can get a good start on drying your oven with lump charcoal alone. There would be with very little smoke and no direct flame on the dome until it is ready for it. But, wet or dry oven, good seasoned (dry) wood is a must. If your wood source is borderline, you may try preheating your kindling on a gas grill. (Be careful with that idea) You may be able to put some more inside but to the back and sides of your oven before you start. This wood should dry some from the heat of the small fire. If you have an oven rake or something like that you can drag a small piece or two at a time to the fire. You can take the heat from that burn and help finish drying some borderline seasoned wood for the next. Just wait until the coals are dead and the oven temp falls to below 300 degrees, you can place the wood for your next fire inside the oven to dry a bit for the next time you fire the oven.

Aside from all this, you may also want to think about doing your first fires when the neighbors are asleep .

Good luck with the neighbors and SWMBO!

[david s]

All great advice. Also when ovens are new and still moist they will tend to be smokey. I preheat pieces of wood in the entry so they ignite almost as soon as they are placed in the oven. A blowpipe is useful to ensure that you have a continual flame. If the flame dies the oven will smoke.cook some bread and share it with neighbours, or better stil, invite them over for pizza. They will be then far more tolerant of minor smoke issues. You don't want them to stew and fester over this issue.

[fremen325]

David has the right idea. Invite them over for pizza and tasty adult beverages!

[gugahulk]

Guys thanks for all the reply, I must say I have tried everything everyone mention here. And it was nothing but a disasters, I was so frustrated that I built this amazing oven and now I can not use it as it was smoking so bad that was getting inside of my bedroom and bathroom of the house. The hole house was smelling like smoke. My wife even threat me to leave the house... HOWEVER I FOUND THE SOLUTION!

The AIR MOVER worked perfectly! I had ZERO SMOKE! I had ZERO SMOKE SMELL! I was so surprised that I tried to burn the most smokee wood I could find and that was a total success also. I basically put the air mover shooting straight up and it created some type of super draft. The smoke coming out of the oven was shot hundreds of feet in the air and there was ZERO smoke, ZERO smell basically like nothing was happening. My wife for the first time stay outside to watch the fire burn as it was a pleasant thing. I was also able to bring my oven to 600F and got some part of the dome clear. I am so happy this worked and I hope if any member ever have this issue they will use this method as it works perfectly.

In another note. I made my first over night roast. Since the oven was hot I was like what a hell, I will put a COMPLETELY FROZEN BEEF RIB in the oven and see what happens. I put the beef rib last night at 10:00pm only put rock salt on top of it. nothing else. I have no door so I put some bricks to keep the heat in. Just now 12pm I went home to get it and took it to my office for everyone to try it. I open the ribs in the office so me an my coworks would all have the same reaction, total success or total fail. Let me tell you something it was a TOTAL SUCCESS! From frozen to the best BEEF RIBS we all ever ate. Super tenter, perfectly season and amazing. Below are some picture of the ribs and aftermath. Thanks for everyone's help.

[deejayoh]

Glad to hear the air mover worked - but if you're only getting your oven to 600F, I suspect it's still pretty wet.

Wood combusts at somewhere around 600-700F. Ovens will smoke until the fire hits that temp. You'll notice when have a fire that seems to be going pretty good, and you add a piece of wood - oven smokes. Unless you have the temp up over 700 or so. Then the wood just combusts.

http://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article10.html#1.3

Get your oven dry. Follow tips on low-smoke fire lighting (I think there is a "top-down fire lighting" thread somewhere on forum but with the changes I am too dam lazy to search). It should only smoke for about 20 minutes on startup once it is dry.

[Thorin]

I just installed a Giordino 70 and have a nice double walled 6" stainless chimney running above the ridgeline of my house. I've had curing fires up to 550 degrees now but the smoking is horrible, even when I see that I have a good draft. Not sure what to do about this yet, but I'm intrigued by the mention of an air mover. How did you use this to eliminate all smoke?

[ga@46]

i am not sure what an air mover is but after i first used my oven and had the smoke problem i used my paint stripper air gun just point it to the base of the fire for 10 seconds and the fire was shooting up like it was coming out of a rocket and all smoke would stop if after a while it would start a few more seconds with air gun and the fire was lighting up nicely again

[purplehaze]

Still building my own oven so I dont have experience with the smoke issue yet but try this video.

[purplehaze]

I am still building my oven but here is a video of a possible fix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvrUrnEIQoo

[Gulf]

That is a very very interesting video. Thanks for posting. The "double chamber" Ernie Wisner is referring to in the video is exactly what the FB plans on this site call for in building a Pompeii. It is designed mainly to keep the smoke out of your face. The examples he shows that are smoking, like crazy, are just hemisphere ovens with no flue. Even his examples are shown with a very heavy fuel load. He talks about the double chamber as a place to re-burn the smoke that is normally wasted. He is correct on the smoke being a sign of wasted fuel. But, the re-burn in the flue is still wasted fuel. The object is to re-burn it in the oven chamber. That takes starting the fire with a very small fire load. That can be done with bird nest size twigs and adding fuel as the fire will accept it, creating a coal bed early with lump charcoal, or the top down method. All work pretty well. The smoke only lasts a very few seconds/minutes if the fuel is sufficiently dry. The blast door is also useful. I have one myself. But, I would not use it to create the fire from hell. That does very little for heating the cooking chamber, only the atmosphere. The smoke that the neighbors are complaining about will probably be the least of the problems caused by a flue without a spark arrestor. At least, one that is built that close to a dwelling. Ernie is credited on the video as being a "Heat Engineer". After seeing him grab the hot end of that walking cane after using it as a fire poker, I think that his credits should be, "Smoke Engineer". I'll let ya'll decide what "smoke" that is in reference is to .