How’s my spec?

[Ian.m]

Evening all.
like a lot, I’ve been reading and following for long time and have recently actually sighed up in anticipation of actually starting my own build.
ill be starting a build thread in the next day or 2 but I just wanted to put a few questions to the forum first.

I’m fairly limited with size. I have room for a external dome size of 1200mm and I want the outside of the oven faced in brickwork rather than render so this automatically sucks up a lot of dome space.
im proposing a 110mm internal fire brick, 50mm insulation blanket and then a I plan on cutting headers down to 75mm for the outside. So a wall thickness of 235mm X2 = 470mm. This will give an internal dome size of around 700mm

what’s everyone’s thoughts on this and I can I get away with 2” of insulation?
our neighbour has a prefab pizza oven with a 600 internal diameter and it easily deals with parties of 15+ people and for this reason I think 700 will be fine. I know bigger is better but I don’t have the room.

Look forward to the replies.
thanks.
ian

[UtahBeehiver]

David S is a big fan of smaller ovens and his cast ovens are around the same ID. If you wanting a brick outer surface, look at what Gulf did with his it sounds similar to what you want to do. You can get by with 2" of ceramic blanket for insulation but not v or pcrete. This poses a problem on how you will do a brick outer surface without a subsurface to lay on.

[Ian.m]

Thanks for the prompt reply.
my plan was to use 2” of blanket insulation that would be mesh wire wrapped. I then planned on using the now wrapped oven as a former. With a dome being self supporting the external brickwork would all still mainly be supported by the slab and not the oven. Would this work?

[david s]

My oven is only 540mm internal and parties up to 40 are easy provided everyone shares whatever comes out of the oven. At 2 mins/pizza that’s 30/hr one at a time. I’ve done up to 80 guests, but need to have some other foods to supplement for parties of this size. If you have a big oven you won’t be firing it up for the family to cook 3 pizzas on a Friday night and if you want to do a Sunday roast or cook a loaf of bread you’ll need a wheelbarrow full of wood to do it.

For some reason that escapes me, Americans seem to think that bigger is better. The size of cars and their motor’s capacity is another example of this. It follows on to oven size too.

[UtahBeehiver]

David brings up a good point about firing up for a small party. I have a large oven (42") and it is not practical to fire it up for a couple pizza. It see action for large parties 10 plus people.

[Ian.m]

Thanks for the reply’s. It’s put my mind at ease regarding the size. I had convinced myself after seeing my neighbors 600 in action but it’s nice for reassurance.

could anybody Coment on the construction method regarding the outside brick skin as I’m struggling to find a build thread that also is brickwork on the outside.
once the oven in wrapped does it then get used as a former for the brickwork. Is it simply just laid over the top?
thanks.
lan

[UtahBeehiver]

As I mentioned previously, look at Gulf's build.