lightweight & portable suggestions required

[Dave Wells]

Hi, I've been dreaming of a pizza oven for years and i finally have chance to build one after buying my first house.

The house needs lots of work doing so this will be a summer project at the earliest but I'm designing it now.

I dont want to build a permanent structure because the garden space is precious enough as it is, i want to build something i can wheel into and out of the garage.

I am fairly confident i can build the mobile structure, it the lightweight oven part I'm not sure about.

For the floor I was thinking of layering (from the bottom up) perlcrete, wine bottles, perlcrete, sand, fire bricks.

And for the wall i was going to make a perlcrete dome on a sand form and render the outside for weather proofing. However, I'm not confident there is enough thermal mass in perlcrete.

Can anyone offer any suggestions, i need to keep the mass down and try not to raise the centre of gravity. I also want to save money and I'm prepared to deviate from tradition

Many thanks for any/all suggestions.

[dakzaag]

You are correct, the pericrete will not have enough mass to do a nice job cooking. If you want to keep the unit light, you are going to spend some money on high efficiency insulation. The wine bottle and sand is a poor insulator and heavy as well. You are looking for light weight and some decent mass. I would go with an aluminum angle iron frame
( 1.25" X 5/16 or something like that) supporting a thin layer of 8" CMU caps (1.5" CMU ) then 2" of Cal sil board, then a layer of splits on the floor. The dome can be standard firebrick but only cut them 2.25" deep and this will cut the dome mass in half. Then insulate the dome with ceramic fiber and a pericrete parge followed up with a stucco overcoat to help water proof. If you stick with a 32" oven and a really basic vent, you might be able to move this in and out of the garage by hand as long as the driveway is fairly level. The listed items are not the cheapest method, but they are the lightest way to build. A single axle trailer with 3500 capacity rating is probably minimum if you ever intend to tow this behind the vehicle. (which you will once you figure out how to use it!) I saw a similar unit for sale on facebook last year, $3,500 was the asking price. Professional stove builder did it and it was pretty sharp.