Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

[v12spirit]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

Ready to clad the oven. Some update pictures on the steel skeleton will be posted soon.
Question: Is this material (sodium metasilicate pentahydrate granular) lime?

My search tells it must be. Can someone just assure that? Hasn't anyone bought a bag of lime and read what was written on it?

Question: which is better for the 3:1:1:1 formula, white or black cement?

[stonecutter]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

My search tells it must be. Can someone just assure that? Hasn't anyone bought a bag of lime and read what was written on it?

Question: which is better for the 3:1:1:1 formula, white or black cement?

The difference between the black and white cement ( are you sure that it's portland and not mortar?) is that black has pigments added to it. Either one will work.

[Laurentius]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

The difference between the black and white cement ( are you sure that it's portland and not mortar?) is pigments added. Either will one will work.

Either or neither, will one or one will? Confused.

[v12spirit]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

Either or neither, will one or one will? Confused.

I think he meant: either one will work.

[stonecutter]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

Either or neither, will one or one will? Confused.

Phone typo

[stonecutter]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

I think he meant: either one will work.

Bingo....very perceptive.

[v12spirit]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

That is the question. If I want to add some thermal mass to the dome, how can it be achieved without requiring one more box of IFBs, which is not cheap neither easy to bring one more again?

Welded a "side skirt" all around the hearth to "carry" the cladding of the dome, and thin steel sheets lining th dome vertically to provide a sort of "cracking control" by minimizing the size of refractory pieces. On the lower third of the side area of the dome welded a steel "belt" to gently reinforce the refractory pieces over the dome. Every refractory piece will have the "skirt" under it, a steel sheet on both sides of it, and the belt reinforcing it to the dome. This is how I managed to let the steel hearth carry the refractory rather than making the refractory settle directly on the IFBs as in Wiley's oven. Enlarged the vent for better smoke abatement, and adjusted the squirrel tail to contribute to the cladded dome heating up.

[david s]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

That oven looks to me like it will be very smoky at start up unless you have an extractor fan fitted. Oops, you already have one.(just reread your thread)
Your bricks on the side will take much longer to heat if they only have one contact point with the inner dome, as it appears in the pic. Any air between the steel and brick will act as really good insulation which will just increase the time the oven takes to heat up, which is contrary to your design intention. To achieve good contact, maybe slop some Homebrew between them and the dome so they are in full contact with the steel. As the top of the oven will get hotter first, perhaps the bricks would be better placed on the top rather than on the side.

[TropicalCoasting]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

The chimney/entrance will heat up and draw a lot of heat from the dome.
Is there anyway of separating it,with an insulated break?
Now would be the time to put in a stop for the door to isolate the dome from the chimney too.

Then have thermal mass and insulation around dome and just insulation around arch and chimney.

Looks excellent though a good use of available materials.

[v12spirit]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

That oven looks to me like it will be very smoky at start up unless you have an extractor fan fitted. Oops, you already have one.(just reread your thread)
Your bricks on the side will take much longer to heat if they only have one contact point with the inner dome, as it appears in the pic. Any air between the steel and brick will act as really good insulation which will just increase the time the oven takes to heat up, which is contrary to your design intention. To achieve good contact, maybe slop some Homebrew between them and the dome so they are in full contact with the steel. As the top of the oven will get hotter first, perhaps the bricks would be better placed on the top rather than on the side.

Exactly. That is what I am going to do. I just laid the bricks in order for the reader to get the sense. I even have two options; the first is this, and the second is to fill the thermal mass pockets with just homebrew instead, I mean without the brick slices. I don't know which is more cracking resistant.
The smoky start up has been prepared for by two removable smoke barriers installed at the throat of the vent. One is what I named smoke sentinel in a previous post and resides at the outside of the opening, the other is the one shown in the picture. It resides in the middle of the vent throat. Hopefully these two devices will act as two layers of obstacles that will channel the smoke upwards. The majority of smoke will hopefully be forced into the flu while a minority of it may find its way into my kitchen. I want the oven to be naturally aspirated without the help of my damaged extractor fan which became useless as the power is off for long periods in my region. All of that, with the help of my modification to the location of the gap where the flu exits the house (I made it lower to avoid upright angles in the flu) must all do something to abate the smoke. This is all theory. Practice will do the judgement. I can only keep my fingers crossed and go ahead.
Picture not uploading I'll try later
And yes, thicker refractory will be cladded on top of the dome.

[v12spirit]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

The chimney/entrance will heat up and draw a lot of heat from the dome.
Is there anyway of separating it,with an insulated break?
Now would be the time to put in a stop for the door to isolate the dome from the chimney too.

Then have thermal mass and insulation around dome and just insulation around arch and chimney.

Looks excellent though a good use of available materials.

Have been thinking of heat breaks at the opening. Having seen Tonyp's indooer oven (which is provided with a good heat brake at the opening) having a hesitant smoke draw when there is no live fire in the oven made me go less strict with thermal breaks (The hotter the chimney is the better it draws smoke). The plan became recently to provide thermal brakes at the entrance arch, and for the chimney far enough from the horizontal part of it. Although I have an extractor fan, I will exclude it from the plan because electricity became questionable in my town and doesn't seem to be imroving in the upcoming months. The plan is to compensate for the unavailable electric energy required to run the fan that will mechanically draw the smoke- by some more thermal energy from the plentiful wood so the chimney aspirates smoke naturally.

[v12spirit]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

The insufficient amount of IFBs turned out to be an advantage! I ealized recently that the steel hearth is kinda convex. It is not level to be able to rest on level IFBs. Filling underneath with clay-sand mix doesn't work for insuffecient number of IFBs available.
The original idea suggested by "david s" was to lay the available IFBs and to stuff in between with ceramic blanket making advantage of the steel hearth self support ability.
To cope with the convexity of the steel hearth I decided to fix the oven in the correct desired place using three temporary "anchor bricks" that acted as three legs that made the oven "fly" over the slab, then slip the IFBs GRADUALLY (to make sure that every added IFB does not spoil the balancing of the oven) under the steel hearth so they snug tightly against the bottom of the steel hearth. The IFBs were able to snug that tightly by tightly stuffing small cumbles of foam vegetable box between the IFBs and the slab. The spring-like stress of the foam crumbles did a good job by forcing the IFBs in place against the bottom of the slab, then mortar was sloped/injected under the IFBs and all around the small crumbles that became buried forever under the IFBs. I wrapped the IFBs with papers knowing that I am an inexperienced mason so I can repeat the process in case that fails.. The theory was that the mortar will dry leaving the IFBs in the exact position to hug the convex steel hearth so the oven can rest very balanced with its all weight distributed fairly over the whole IFBs. The oven will be removed to allow for the stuffing inbetween the IFBs with the ceramic blanket before it is retuned back to its final resting position.

[v12spirit]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

Leveled the IFBs, then removed the oven (after the correct level for the IFBs was copied from the convex steel hearth of the oven) in order to stuff the gaps with ceramic blanket. I used scoria to enclose all around the hearth insulation (both the IFBs and the ceramic blanket). You can see the IFBs still wapped with papers because I'm not confident of my masonry skills, just in case I needed to repeat the whole process.

[wotavidone]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

This thing is in your kitchen, isn't it?
Better hurry up and finish it.
My wife would have run out of patience long ago..........

[v12spirit]

Re: Brick oven reconstructed to a steel one

This thing is in your kitchen, isn't it?
Better hurry up and finish it.
My wife would have run out of patience long ago..........

You got a point there. It is due to too many delay factors; life here isn't like it was before anymore.. It is hard for someone who didn't experience that to understand what I mean, I hope nobody would. That is all apart from the fact that the oven is experimental in hope to reduce heating up time without scarifying the good cooking properties of Pompei ovens.
Nevertheless, you are right at bothering the lengthy project period. The wife, dad, mom, cousins, and some friends do. I started feeling like an annoying dawdler, but I reserve the fact that I am knowing things they don't know; they just know that this oven should run fine, but do not know how this is achieved. Without my time consuming trials and errors myself would never have known all of that.