Dreaming of oven for many years, now want to start

[Pete C]

Mr. GolfGuiedo,

I've been reading this thread with great interest. I am building a 36"-er as well up in Sacramento. Feel free to PM me if you like and perhaps we can chat on the phone. I have only 4 courses laid on my dome, so I'm somewhat behind you.

IMO the FB instruction book is somewhat lacking in regards to arch placement and construction. This thread has answered many questions for me in that respect.

[GreenViews]

Like Pete I have followed your build with interest. I'm even further behind and wow you have finished your dome fast. Good work and I've learned a lot from your thread which probably helped save me from making a big inner arch mistake. Cheers!

[golfguiedo]

JR - looking at your thread #111 an #124 I would guess that your thermal break is mostly on the bottom 5-6 bricks left & right side. I dont really see much of a point to the thermal breaks when maybe the top of the “L” has a break, but the side/bottom is still mortared to the oven. I am not imaging a way it is fully separated so I guess i dont understand.

Regaridng you flue - do I see it is maybe 4.5” I(1/2 brick) by maybe 6” long. So about 25” sq area? I am trying to size my pipe and was thinking I need Pi*R2 = 28sq if 6”. Pipe. Wanted to just check you arppprozximate size aso I can size the pipe I was buying. I am contemplating size and if I am going to surround single wall, or leave double wall open to air. Esthetics but just checking the opening size you ended with after you inner radius up the flue.

[JRPizza]

Post #111 was not me - it was someone posting on my thread with their pic, and #124 is me posting pics of other folks build. You can see my cut L bricks on my post #154, and my aft vent arch partially built up in post #185 where you can also see my rope gasket being trapped as the arch goes up. I didn't post a shot of the base L bricks being laid but below is a shot I took when I was doing fit-up of the arch that shows the gap a little further down.
I had to look back at my build to see what the flue opening at the top was. Check out post #193 - I ended up with 61 in^2 which was plenty to feed my 8" pipe. The trick was transitioning from rectangle to square and fitting my adapter plate. I went with double wall as I was penetrating a wood roof and wanted proper thermal protection.

[Mongo]

JR - looking at your thread #111 an #124 I would guess that your thermal break is mostly on the bottom 5-6 bricks left & right side. I dont really see much of a point to the thermal breaks when maybe the top of the “L” has a break, but the side/bottom is still mortared to the oven. I am not imaging a way it is fully separated so I guess i dont understand.
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You are correct. You don't want your outer arch mortared to the inner arch. Doesn't look likeJR has mortar between the two. Ideally they don't touch but that's tricky. If your interested, look at my build thread #36. My outer only touches my inner along a single edge..

Having only built one oven I have no perspective but I'm baking around 300 f 2 days after a pizza fire. I don't know if that's good or bad.

[golfguiedo]

Hello Mngo, JR and Russel. today got the chimney parts on order from Menards online. Supervent 6". Nice price for double wall under $170 delivered for all 3 pieces, 36" tall. I am stuck now, and Mongo is not too far from me, trying to think about where I get the ceramic rope. anyone have a source? Figure if Mongo is only 90 minutes from me, he might have a local source.

In the wait time for my chimney to arrivev, thought I would move forward and get hte rear dome insulated. Bought the FB insulation. Do I understand that I 1) Install insulation, 2) wire it ontop, 3) use laith ontop, 4) put a scratch coat on it 5) I think russel put a coat of vermiculite nearly 2" thick ontop of that before his copper cladding? I plan to stucco my oven but wanted to get confirmation of 1-4 is the normal way to attack my oven before i get the entrance chamber started.

[UtahBeehiver]

Any fire place store or refractory store will carry ceramic rope, you can even buy it of the big "A" online store. Be sure you install the rope where it is not exposed to any of the food areas. 1-4 is correct but you want to cure the oven after 2 or 3 but before 4.

[golfguiedo]

well today is curing day 1. inside bricks are still under 200 so going to start building up the fire to get the bricks over 212F aroud 250F

[golfguiedo]

HI Fellas. Well I have spent time curing the oven. Day 1 was 14 hrs 300>350F, day 2 was 12 hrs 400>450F and day 3 was about 8 hrs (around 500F). Finished last night. During my curing I noticed that (2) areas on the arch, the mortor may have slightly separated from the brick, showing evidence that my bond was not good, but didn't see any cracks otherwise in any bricks. A fair amount of soot I assume because I was burning walnut and it has a lot of oil in it. so my oven is black now :<( the front arch cleaned right off but I don't think I'm gonna climb in to clean it as I will be burning walnut often.

Also received my thermal barrier rope and got a 1/2" x 2" x 10' long. I plan to cut my entrance bricks by 2" x 1/2" leaving 1/2" brick on the top. Also place the rope on top of the arch should work well.

Should get my chimney pipes from Menards on 6/19 I hope, so maybe I can get some Weekend DIY oven work completed and perhaps even stucco the top this weekend. I must say though, Menards is very slow to ship! Beware.

[golfguiedo]

thought I would try to knock out the Flue on Fathers day weekend and got at least the arch mortered in place, using "L" cuts to allow me to insert the 2"x1/4" thermal break on both the base bricks and on top the round arch, and between the face of the arch and the chimney box. So there are breaks in 3 places (top and face of arch) and on the base bricks.

Going to finish the chimney this week, and push for a July4th Pizza....

[golfguiedo]

Russel or Mongo.- wanted to ask a question having completed my chimney after dinner last night. Next step for me is the local building inspector comes over to give me the green light on my patio structure and will see the oven for the 1st time. Anyone ever talk about this in past threads, about any questions they might get asked? notice my chimney is shortened to have the cap on top with a screen to make a spark-arrester included inside to make sure that is no issue in CA underneath a covered structure.

My questions is related to firing up for a PIZZA now. Any one point me to the particulars of best woods to consider, and best temperatures I should try to get the over up-to for the 1st pizza. with my curing fires, the brick on the bottom only reached about 500F. So I may start to cure a few days again at 500F.

Going to scratch and stucco this weekend before I make a PIZZA so I can hav ehte 1st pizza with a nice looking FornoBravo Pizza Oven in the background. I best get looking for some tools and some right wood to burn.

Thought I would ask for the combined wisdom of you all.

[UtahBeehiver]

You can never know what a building inspector might say. There is some concern on my end that the chimney will be under a covered structure. I am not sure what the CA codes are but it would not fly where I live, where the chimney vent under a structure must extend 2 feet above the roof line of the structure. But who knows about your case.

I use my junkie woods, ie pine, alder, for the initial startup, then move towards the better and higher btu woods as I start to reach the higher temps, ie oaks, fruit hardwoods. When I move the coal to the side I still like a live fire when I start cooking and I use 1" or so diameter hardwoods. I floor usually runs about 700 F with the dome at 900 F. If the top of the pizza needs a little browning, I do what is called doming, taking the peel with pizza on it and raising it towards the dome, only takes 15-20 seconds to basically broil the toppings. When cooking for a large group sometimes I have to recharge the floor by spreading the coals back over the cooking surface for a few minutes then push back to the side. I am sure there are other techniques out there as well.

Seriously consider a dome vent at the apex of the dome in the stucco. so any moisture that converts to steam has an egress point .

[golfguiedo]

Final inspection passed today so I am good to go. My chimney was approved in my plans under the covering as the covering was tall, so I was hopeful the inspector would not have trouble. he came and left before I even knew, just found the paper when I was wondering why he didnt ring the doorbell.

Here's a picture of the final version.


This is the 1st time I heard of a adding a dome vent. I think I saw something in your pictures, and I wondered what that was. Now I get it. It's allowing moisture to escape the bricks and egress thru the stucco. So in general, I just add a hole in the top of stucco to let moisture escape? Q1) Anyplace you can point me to a size or type of a vent for this purpose? Is it as simple as a metal pipe? If you can point me to a thread on this, would appreciate that.

Q2) As I got to ~500 on the sides already, and plan to start a fire at 500 to see how the chimney functions, any suggestions on a 2nd curing regiment?
Q3) Just for my reference, about how much time do you prepare for the fire to get to temp, before you cook. realizing all ovens are different, but I suspect very similar, still not clear how big a fire or how much wood and how much time is needed. I think I hear use some lumber to preserve the costly materials, and once that fire has taken hold, get going with some larger pieces adding continuously to get to a raging fire? maybe a foot in diameter. I'll search the threads to get educated on this but I thought I'd ask how much prep time bfore the pizza is inside.
Q4) the door. It;s time to get going on making one. Do you have the door on during the heatup process or when cooking or is it generally removed both of these steps?

[UtahBeehiver]

The vent that Gulf and I used are called breather vents and they are cheap, less than $10 at any auto parts store, the ones we used have a 1/2" male npt and a 1/2" female PVC bushing that is set in the stucco at the apex of the dome. Gulf added some wire mesh around his bushing for extra strength and surface bonding area. Looks like you golden with the building inspector.

Q2, Still be patient and slow and not spike the temp to fast
Q3. My oven takes about 2 -2.5 hours to reach cooking temps, ie floor saturated at 700 F. 12" wood should be split to be more effecient
Q4. Gulf made what he calls a blast door that he uses during fire up, Look at his build or thread,

[david s]

Here are a couple of alternative methods of venting the insulation space.