36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

[Gulf]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Texas,
I don't know why, but last night this pic appeared to have about a 4 ? ? to 5? opening.



Shadowing, my old eyes, I don't know?) I looked at it much closer this evening. It does appear to have 3" of reveal on each side of the hole. From a 12 X12, that would leave a 6" opening. I knew that you had a 6" flu. But, at the time, this transition brick appeared to me as a bottleneck. Six inches is fine for a 36" oven. My apologies .

As for as the interlocking of the corners for a vent/flu transition goes, that is just my humble opinion. My ideas for how one should be built require deeper entries. That is not a popular subject for this site .

If all that is required of your great or great-great grandkids, (in order to keep your masterpiece funtional), is to touch up the entry..................so what .

[Sharkey]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Congratulations Texas, that is a nice looking oven and an excellent job with the detailed documentation too.

Regarding Gulf?s concern with your reverse arch vent, I think that yours would have gone close to being self-supporting when dry stacked without the form. You certainly could have built it without using the form. I know mine stacked ok, but it was a bit lower.

For others that will certainly use this build as a reference in the future Gulf is suggesting that adding some interlocking bricks to the structure would be beneficial, especially if you were going to add more weight on top of the vent. With mine I made the reverse arch bricks for the vent wider than the final opening width then reduced with the levelling row interlocking at both the front and back. See the attached pic ? it explains it.

[texman]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

That is a really nice setup. Well done and congrats. Thanks for posting all the details as well. This is am excellent tutorial from start to finish.

Texman

[Texas]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Thanks guys...So far it has worked great for us...

Gulf - I really have no idea, but I took the info I gleaned from several builds... two that come to mind are Sharkey http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/21/b...e-14459-2.html pg 2, posts #19 & #20 and GianniFocaccia http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/8/oc...o-7122-17.html pg 17 post #167. Looking back at them ours might go higher...hard to tell. I just wanted to get them reasonably level and the dry stacking I did in the garage seemed pretty stable.

The vent opening was 6" square at the top and the Duravent we used was 6". The anchor plate shown in the lower left corner in picture #1 on page 4 post #35 http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/8/36...n-21575-4.html was inserted in the hole cut into the 12x12 brick and screwed in where you see the screw holes marked in picture #2. So far, the oven vents great with a few wafts of smoke out the front when the oven first starts and on a windy day, we get a little smoke out front. I think the 6" is OK... we looked at doing a larger vent, but felt would have needed to make the vent area deeper than the 9" to fit it in. The base plate for the 6" is 10" square, 7" is 11" and the 8" is 12". We didn't want the screws to be too close to the edge of the block.

The dimensions of the anchor plate are on pg 32 here http://www.duravent.com/docs/product...011cat_web.pdf

The chimney pipe length is 7 ft (3 ft section + 4 ft section) plus a chimney cap.

I guess time will tell. Got my fingers crossed it lasts my lifetime.

[Gulf]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Texas,

You have a very beautiful oven and entertainment area. A lot of great brick work and planning went in to it.

The only things that concern me are: The curve of your transition and the size of your flu opening.

The reverse curve of your flu transition, and that there is no locking courses front and back (they appear to run by) go against my limited understanding of brick work. My early training was that any and all brick must pass a "dry stack" test. That is, if it will stand (without mortar) then it is okay to proceed. I am not too sure that yours will. But, then you may not be interested in your work surviving your lifetime. My real point is for future builders. You may be okay with what you have. But, I stress that anyone who wants to take the flu brick higher (more weight) needs to beware.

Your flu transition "square to round" looks to be about 4" to 4.5". That is pretty close for a 36" oven. You may have to increase the heighth of your chimney to compensate.

[GianniFocaccia]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Magnificent oven, masterfully executed. Love the hemispherical arches and beautiful setting for family and friends. Nice job!

[Greenman]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

What an excellent outdoor set-up. It looks great and I am sure that many happy times will be had there. Congratulations.

[vertigopilot]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Fabulous! All it needs now is grapevines winding along the rafters.

[Texas]

36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

And with furniture!

To the left of the oven is a landing counter for when the hot pizza (or other dishes) come out of the oven.

Under that counter is a tilt out trash can.

Under the oven is the wood storage area.

To the right of the oven is a counter for pizza prep. Under the counter is an outlet and an open area that we put a metal rack - when making pizzas, I put the dough balls on the shelf (in a covered plastic tray), a plastic tub of soapy water, and extra utensils and such. There is also room under the counter, beside the rack, for a small cooler..... if it is a hot day and I've taken out extra toppings, I store them there. The ones on the counter are in containers over ice.

To the right of the counter area is a 36" built in grill with double doors below it. To the right of the grill is a double side burner with double drawers under it.

The switches for the lights and another outlet is at the end of the grill/side burner area.

On the curved seating area center post, is another outlet.

[vertigopilot]

Re: 36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Beautiful work! I especially enjoyed seeing your approach to building the vent transition. Very elegant!

[Texas]

36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

And a close up of our sign! It is engraved in the same granite as the counters. The granite guys cut the piece and finished the piece. The engraving was done by:

Brick and Stone Graphics.
10310 Plano Rd. Suite B
Dallas, TX 75238
t) 214.343.0573
Brick and Stone Graphics:: Home of the Engraved Brick Fundraiser Program
Ask for Penny - she is awesome!

(I am not associated with them at all... we just found them and they did a fantastic job)

[Texas]

36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Here is what the finished oven looks like!

[Texas]

36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Econolite - used 4 bags.

Picture #2 - Put over the insulation blanket & over the edges of the 3" of insulation board exposed on the outside of the dome, so that it didn't get torn up with shoes and tools hitting the insulation board. 3" high to cover the insulation board edge, used 3 pounds.

Pictures #3 & #4 - Used the remaining amount to cover the insulation blanket once the oven was done. At first we used garden edging to form a layer because we were having difficulty getting it to stick to the blanket. After forming two bands at the bottom, we went back to putting it on with a trowel. Found that if it was a little on the wet side and didn't try to do too much at a time and to get it too smooth, we could get it to stick. Put on as much as we could, then let it dry and put more on.

Mixed 1 3/4 cup water with 1 pound Econolite. Mixed in 1 pound batches for coating the insulation board edges. Mixed in 5 pound batches for over the blanket (did a couple bigger batches 7-8 pound, but found 5 worked pretty good for us). Mixed the 5 pound batches in a 5 gal bucket with a garden shovel. Used a plastic cup marked at 1 3/4 cup and filled with water by dipping out of a bucket. Put in 4 parts of the water, stirred, then added the 5th (and sometimes more or less) until consistency wanted. We felt that the Econolite was easier to apply when mixed on the slightly wetter side, rather than on the dry side. I calculated the 1 3/4 cup water to one pound by using 16 cups water to gallon, 2.7 gal water to 25 pound Econolite, so 1 pound Econolite would use 1.728 cups of water. We did 1 3/4 plus or minus to the consistency we wanted, but gave us a target to know where to start.

Our part is done!! The contractor came back to do the finishing work.

[Texas]

36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

used 2 boxes, 8# Inswool HP blanket 1"x24"x25' at $65.00 per box from Larkin. Saved enough to put 2" thick in door, all remaining went on oven. 3 layers on entire oven, with the exception of the vent arch (two layers) and on the bottom of the oven, we put the first layer all the way to the base (covering the 3" of floor insulation). Layer #2 started 3" up in order to stagger the seams and the first 3" is insulation, not firebrick. We also used string and bungee cords to help hold things in place between placing the layers.

The inside edge of the 4"x8"x16" cinderblock is placed 5" off the edge of the oven base at each of the back walls (you can see in picture #2) to allow for the cinder block enclosure that will be built around the oven. The 1" allows room for the Econolite layer that will go over the blanket insulation (and a bit extra since the blocks are not actually 4").

[Texas]

36" in DFW Area - Building the Oven!

Picture #1 - Used the angle grinder to make the square to round transition in one of the 12"x12" firebrick like used for the floor.

Picture #2 - Marked the holes for the anchor plate. Put Uni-extreme high temp sealer on anchor plate and fastened with Tapcon SS concrete anchors 1/4" x 1 3/4".

Picture #3 - With anchor plate mounted to the 12x12 tile, we heat stop 50 in place, taking care to level in all directions.