George's Pompeii progress

[asudavew]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

So George..

did you get that oak...
I've been thinking about buying a cord myself.

How much wood do you usually use to fire up your WFO?

I usually use about 15 pieces. 2 ft long. Split. Maybe 4 or 5inches in diameter.
My heat up time is about 1.5 hours.

How is your setup working?

I was just curious...

Dave

[Acoma]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Dave, based on the frequency of your using the WFO, and the amount to fire up, you should be good for maybe 2 years max?

[gjbingham]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Dave,
Yes, I got the Oak. White I think. Very good price, $165, not seasoned, and frozen solid. I now have four +/- chords of wood drying, none of it really, really dry. Piss poor planning, as I like to say, but by summer, I should be in good shape.

I'm burning about 12 - 15 or so three inches wide, 16 inches long pieces to get the oven hot enough for pizza. Probably 20 or so for the whole process of cooking. My floor is still cooling off really quickly, I went from 750 to 550 degrees in about 45 minutes on the last bake, so I've got to have bread ready to go while we eat the pies. Kind of a pain, but I'm still playing with a wet grinder on the landing and getting the entryway bricks soaked every once in awhile. That, and the rainy weather may keep my oven from completely drying out. I'm hoping for an improvement in the future, but if not, I can still work with it. It's functional, for sure!

[Frances]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Its interesting you should say that, because I'm finding the floor heat to be quite tricky, too.

I thought maybe it was because the Vermiculite doesn't insulate as well as the rockwool over the dome, or because the Vermiculite's still basically - not to put to fine a point on it... when it comes down to it - well, basically its wet. Or maybe because the floor bricks aren't as thick as the dome.

Baking bread works really well if I have enough embers left after baking pizza to cover the whole floor with, but you do have to get it just right.

Having said elsewhere that I can now visualise inches, I realise that I can't really , and I'm not going out into the cold to measure my pieces of wood for comparison either!! But I do have high hopes that the oven will use less wood in the summer when outside temps are higher and the poor thing gets a chance to dry out properly.

So our ovens sound about the same, huh?

[Frances]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Its interesting you should say that, because I'm finding the floor heat to be quite tricky, too.

I thought maybe it was because the Vermiculite doesn't insulate as well as the rockwool over the dome, or because the Vermiculite's still basically - not to put to fine a point on it... when it comes down to it - well, basically its wet. Or maybe because the floor bricks aren't as thick as the dome.

Baking bread works really well if I have enough embers left after baking pizza to cover the whole floor with, but you do have to get it just right.

Having said elsewhere that I can now visualise inches, I realise that I can't really , and I'm not going out into the cold to measure my pieces of wood for comparison either!! But I do have high hopes that the oven will use less wood in the summer when outside temps are higher and the poor thing gets a chance to dry out properly.

So our ovens sound about the same, huh?

[asudavew]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Frances.
I find my floor temps are best when I keep the fire burning in the front part of my oven. ( for pizza anyways)
If I keep the fire just inside the entry it really helps with cook times.
But I think the fire burns better and I use less wood with the fire burning in the back.
The dome definitely clears faster, but my cooking floor toward the front of the oven is low. ( I guess I should push my coals to the sides and cook the pizzas in the very back!)

But I usually don't worry about 90 second pies.
They are fun!
But I like a little more relaxed atmosphere.
3 or 4 minutes works great for me.
And you can load up the pizza for people who like lots of toppings.

anyways...
my 2 cents!

dave

[gjbingham]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Good input Dave,
I agree. There's nothing wrong with a 3 -4 minute bake time on a pizza, but I think the crust turns out a bit different.

I'm a complete greenhorn in cooking in my oven. It's going to take some time, and I won't get another chance for a couple of weeks. As I said previously, I'm using a wet grinder and polishing pads on my landing. The entryway bricks get soaked. I don't think it is such a good thing to keep wetting them then hitting them with high heat over and over again.

I just put a coat of cement slurry on the thing yesterday( to fill small voids in the concrete), so I'm going to just leave it alone for the recommended 10 days before the final polish. Then I will get it dry again, hopefully for the last time.

Frances, I think you're correct about the wet vermiculite under the floor. I used a blanket around the dome so I don't have wet issues there. All in all, I think our ovens are acting very similarly. BTW, just in my head, a 3 X 3 X 16 inch piece of wood is roughly 7.5 X 7.5 X 40.5 cm.

George

[gjbingham]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Good input Dave,
I agree. There's nothing wrong with a 3 -4 minute bake time on a pizza, but I think the crust turns out a bit different.

I'm a complete greenhorn in cooking in my oven. It's going to take some time, and I won't get another chance for a couple of weeks. As I said previously, I'm using a wet grinder and polishing pads on my landing. The entryway bricks get soaked. I don't think it is such a good thing to keep wetting them then hitting them with high heat over and over again.

I just put a coat of cement slurry on the thing yesterday( to fill small voids in the concrete), so I'm going to just leave it alone for the recommended 10 days before the final polish. Then I will get it dry again, hopefully for the last time.

Frances, I think you're correct about the wet vermiculite under the floor. I used a blanket around the dome so I don't have wet issues there. All in all, I think our ovens are acting very similarly. BTW, just in my head, a 3 X 3 X 16 inch piece of wood is roughly 7.5 X 7.5 X 40.5 cm.

George

[gjbingham]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Sorry about the double post. My computer hung up after hitting Post Quick Reply. Teknolgee's a wunderful thing, 'aint it?

[Acoma]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

George and Frances, do you both have twins? They are repeating your very words

[Guerito]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Acoma,

I think I'd settle for Geo & Fran's twins, rather than the spam email from Stephanie in my PMs.

Heads up James, someone is knocking at the back door!

Guerito

[gjbingham]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Guerito,
Wow, is your email address listed in your personal information. Why would someone spam by PM in a forum/board. There might indeed be a backdoor there somewhere.

No twins G. I just stutter.....

[Acoma]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

It happened to me in a different forum. New tactic. I just deleted it and alerted the administrator. Spinless cowards need to provide their number so that we can call them at 3am.

[gjbingham]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Robert: No idea how you delete a post, but you can call me anytime - Jenny (867-5309) (Jenny Jenny, who can I turn to?)

[Frances]

Re: George's Pompeii progress

Who said this thread isn't active, just look at all those posts

Yep Acoma, I've got twins. But for once they weren't to blame...

Thanks for the conversion George! Sometimes I'm just too lazy to work it out... The wood I've got at the moment is running out, about enough for one more firing, but its somewhat bigger than yours, closer to 6 x 6 x 16 inches and I use about 9 - 12 of them for a firing... so that's more or less equivalent to what you are both using. It'll really be interesting to see what differences there are (if any) come summer time.