Apagios's 42" Pompeii

[apagios]

Re: Apagios's 42" Pompeii

Also, you can see in the first picture I have 2 bricks cut to fit the arch.

The story behind this is that for my first pizza fire I had trouble getting the oven temp up past 675-700 *F. After some thought I realized that because I used a basic arch opening with a 13" radius (I wanted to be able to get a turkey in there!) resulted in a 26" wide opening at the bottom.

The hot air exiting through the top of the arch to the vent/chimney will simply flow faster to adjust for the rate of air coming in through the base of the arch. I remembered my basic differential equations from college, Rate in = Rate out.

Rate Out is governed by the cold air in plus energy & mass added from combustion of wood, but the hot exhaust gasses were energized and would simply flow faster to match whatever my rate of cold air in was!

So basically my rate of exhaust gasses out would always adjust itself to attain a balance with the rate of cold air in. To better control my oven I needed to control the rate of the cold air going in.

I took 2 fire bricks and cut them to fit snugly against the side of the arch. I made cardboard templates and traced out the exact shape needed to match the arch. Then simply placed them in on either side. No mortar, they are simply in place to reduce the influx of cold air.

It worked perfectly! I have made many a pizza and have had no problems whatsoever in maintaining 750-800*F and up if I want to. I really like how this worked out as I got the structural strength from the true arch, and the thermal control is now adjustable. For instance if I want to roast a turkey (or anything else) at closer to 600*F I can simply remove the side bricks.

This was just one little trick I learned that I thought might be useful for anyone with over-sized arch issues.

The side bricks are visible in place and working here:

[apagios]

Hello Everyone!

I must confess, I finished up my oven just before Thanksgiving last winter, and was a bit lazy about uploading my build. I intended to have a build thread along the way, but time just got away from me. To be honest, between my real job and working on the oven I had very little free time, so I am afraid my "build thread" turned out to be a "it's done" thread.

I broke ground on July 1st, and laid the final brick on November 12th of 2011. My Dad was extremely helpful, he volunteered 75 hours of his time to help with big days like foundation and hearth pours. I am an aerospace engineer by trade, so out of a nerdy fascination I kept a log of man hours and raw materials. All told my oven was completed in 375 hours of work, and consumed 12,200 lbs of raw materials! 10,000 lbs of those materials were brought home with my little Ford Focus SVT hatchback; towing 1,000 lbs at a time on a 4x8' flatbed trailer!

So I thought I'd post up a link to my Picasa album of my construction. I printed out these pics and made a small photo album for friends to look through while we cook pizza! It's a great way to share the story of it's construction with friends. Also hopefully it can contribute some to a future oven builder, and if anyone has questions, feel free to PM me, I'll be happy to share my lessons learned!

I also wanted to convey my sincere thanks to James for providing such a wealth of information and supporting this forum. And also to everyone on this forum from which I got so much good info and advice!

I had wanted a wood fired brick oven for a long time, and always just presumed it was out of my price range to contract a builder, and not "do-able" as a first masonry project! I gained the knowledge and confidence I needed to do this project from Jame's ebooks and this forum! So thank you so much James!

Often I find it is very rare for a project to be completed and end up looking like what you had in mind. So often in the course of any project, issues arise and plans change. I am extremely proud to say my oven has been the exception to this rule! The picture below is how it sits now and is identical to what I envisioned back in May-June of 2011 when I found this site and began to seriously plan my project!

Here are just a couple highlights from my album. I am really proud of the octagonal prism keystone! I budgeted myself 2 hours to get that cut, figuring it would take lots of trial and error to get it right. Turns out it took less then 10 minutes to cut and it fit perfect the first time! I could not believe it! It was a perfect finish to the dome construction!

My Picasa Album

Blue Skies,
Dave