Pizza Oven Trailer - Advice Needed!

[benbroderick]

Hi. I'm still quite new at this so I'd love some advice to some pizza oven veterans on this topic. I've built a pizza oven from scratch with no prior experience and it worked out great. Makes great pizza and does the job. I want to move onto a new project: a pizza oven trailer. I'm planning on buying a trailer and building an oven on the back, and I seriously need advice on the topic.

1. What would people recommend to support the oven. For my previous oven I used concrete lintels, a cement board and a vermiculite concrete base. Lintels would be too heavy, and I want to build the trailer up to the height that I could cook pizzas at so I'm not stooping over. Need something lightweight that will bring it to the right height.

2. For my oven I bought fire bricks and just laid them on top of the vermiculite base, no adhesive. It works grand for me, but I know some of you will roll your eyes at this. I want to fix my new fire bricks to the base for this project, how can I do this? I know I can't use glue, how would you suggest I fix the bricks in place? And should there be some sort of mortar between the fire bricks themselves?

3. In my oven, the flue pipe has completely detached from the concrete due to the heat. How do I fix the pipe in place so that the expansion due to the heat won't dismember the pipe from the oven?

4. I'm going with a vconcrete dome with insulated blanket inside. I have it on my oven and it works great, no cracks and barely feel the heat on the outside of the dome with 400C inside. What's the story with stainless steel needles and why are they useful? Should I use for mine?

5. Are there any precautions I should take due to the fact that this will be on the road?

Thanks in advance to anyone who has answered these questions. If you have done a project similar to this before, please share your wisdom with me! It would be so appreciated.

Ben

[WoodywWun]

Ben,

I'm no veteran, unfortunately, but I've just built my base on a new build and used reclaimed clay house bricks that I picked up for a snip. The can be found on sites like Freecycle as well. I'm really pleased with my stand as it's strong, bricks are easy to work with and I managed to incorporate an arch as well! I've cast a 75mm thick standard concrete slab on top of that into which I included 10mm reinforcing bars, sand and ballast from a builder's merchants. A mate of mine up the road constructed his base of sturdy, upright timber posts which, without measuring them, are probably about 150 mm X 100 mm (6" x 4"). He was concerned about too much heat/fire transferring to the timber but in reality, it's been no problem.

Can you tell me more about your vermiculite insulating base and dome? How thick are they and what was the mix?

Sorry that I can't offer any more advice as I'm feeling my way with this project and my budget is limited.

[benbroderick]

Thanks for the reply! I've attached photos both of my vermiculite base and the process of the dome. I initially used a 10:1 ratio of vermiculite to fondu cement (heat resistant cement). I then added an inch thick ceramic blanket to the dome which I don't have a photo of. I then used ratio of around 5:3:1 vermiculite:sand:fondu cement (I'm not absolutely certain on this though, might have been less vermiculite) to render the outside of the dome. I used the sand to get more of a smooth finish on the outside as vermiculite can get quite lumpy.

That's interesting that your friend used timber supports! I was also afraid of the timber getting too hot because of the oven but it worked out okay for your friend? What separated the fire from the timber for your friend's oven? Need to know how much of a base I need to put between them so that the timber isn't affected by the heat.

[WoodywWun]

Ben,

The answer is "not a lot between the two"! I'll try and dig out a photo.

He cast a standard concrete base(about 100 mm or 4" thick) in a plywood mould. He actually left the plywood base in and it's still there to this day. He said that when he fired up the oven he was concerned about the temperature that it got to. However, I can report that the fire brigade was never called to his house! It shows that you can get a perfectly good oven going with some fairly basic design features. The pizza he cooks is very good! You can always up the spec on any design but at the end of the day, it's whether the oven cooks what you want, I think.

I would guess that with a little more attention to underfloor insulation, a wooden stand is perfectly good and obviously a lot lighter for a trailer. Ceramic fireboard (50 mm, 2"?) would provide an efficient, light, compact but pricey insulation layer.

[WoodywWun]

...couldn't find your pictures?

[WoodywWun]

Here are the pictures of the wood stand.

[benbroderick]

Thank you for the advice!!
Sorry I forgot to attach the pictures, here they are!