Best material for building up a pompeii oven to deck height?

[Dylankent]

I am planning on building a brick oven/outside fireplace combo, and I am using the pompeii plans from this site. I have a question about raising the height of the oven though. My deck is about 3 ft. off the ground, and I want the oven to be used from the deck, so I need to lift everything three feet before I construct the oven. My current plan is to poor my concrete slab, then use extra concrete blocks to lift the structure about 3 ft, then follow the directions from there. Are there any additional steps I need to take to support the oven? Is there something that might be better than concrete blocks? If anyone has had experience building up their oven, It would be nice to have some advice. Thanks

[Gulf]

Welcome to the forum Dylan,

"Concrete blocks" are the easiest to work with imo. If you will have access to the back of the oven stand, you can take full advantage of that extra "3 ft" of wood storage space.

[JRPizza]

Dylan, by concrete blocks do you mean "cinderblock" type CMUs with the hollow cores? I'm from the when in doubt make it stout camp, so I'd probably pour concrete and put rebar in most all the cores instead of every other one, and make sure I had enough rebar sticking out to tie into the hearth slab. That way, in absence of knowing exactly what was needed, you would know you made it as stout as possible with the materials you had to use.

[Dylankent]

Dylan, by concrete blocks do you mean "cinderblock" type CMUs with the hollow cores?

Yes. I have always called them cinderblocks, but the forno bravo pdf instructions call them concrete blocks. I thought maybe it was what they were called here. Thanks for the advice. I think that if I tie the rebar into the hearth slab, It will work fine. I just wanted some feedback about having just under 6ft of cinderblocks below the hearth would be ok. Also, good idea for back access Gulf. I just need to build a structure inside to give me a floor even with the deck for wood storage directly below the oven.

[JRPizza]

Concrete blocks is probably the right term. We just looked at so many different types that I wanted to make sure you were talking about the ones with cores. Staggering/overlapping the blocks and filling cores + rebar seems to make a pretty stout structure. The link below has good discussions about how much concrete it takes to fill your cores.
If you put in a floor at deck level you can have two story wood storage, one with an entrance on the deck side and the lower one at the rear . Maybe even get creative and build it in two stages with a thinner slab even with the deck for the floor of the upper storage area and a thicker slab for the hearth.

[Gulf]

One half inch concrete anchors could be easily placed in the block stand at the deck level to bolt treated wood or metal runners for a half distance mezzanine level or a sliding drawer. I think that I would set the header for the rear storage door at the same height as the front. Access from the rear door would then be with a little less stooping for loading the mezzanine leve or loading a sliding drawer. As JR stated, pouring all cores is a good idea when extending the height of the dry stacked blocks. A monolithic concrete header/lintel would be a big plus over the back door imo.