36" Pompeii low-dome in Livermore, CA

[Larry P]

My wife voiced some concerns about the deep corner, more useful as a raccoon condo than for wood storage, so I used some of my leftover blocks from the 5th course to build a wall across the back:

[Larry P]

Stacking the blocks... I had originally planned to do 5 layers of block, but decided 4 was enough and stopped there. Then the rains claimed my canopy.

[Larry P]

I poured the slab between Christmas and New Year, with a canopy to help protect me from El Nino

[Larry P]

After about a year of planning, I've started building my oven. My plan was originally for a 42" oven with an elliptical dome, but I decided to back it down to 36" after cooking in a couple ovens, one was a 32" or something like that and pretty nice, another was a FGM950B where the owner was disillusioned with the heat-up time and was thinking about switching to something smaller. So now I'm going for a 36" floor, 14.5" elliptical dome, 9" soldier course, and 9" radius semicircle entry.

My wife and I are vegetarian, plus some fish, and we're very serious about pizza, so I'm more concerned with an oven optimized for pizza and bread, and couldn't care less about stuffing a turkey in there. So the low dome.

The end goal is to have an igloo-style oven with a tile mosaic finish.