36” Storage heater brick oven in Northumberland

[Tintan28]

After years of wishful thinking & tentative research, I’ve finally got around to starting my salvaged heater brick oven. I chose to do it with heater bricks & home brew as I the bricks were readily available to me & I like the idea of repurposing them & other than the fire clay powder the other aggregates I have, plus firebricks & refractory mortar were just too expensive to justify using to my mind.
It’s certainly not going to rival some of the masterpieces on here (Bradmole, for instance) but hopefully it’ll do the job. Really enjoying it so far, but I can see the arch which is next up being a challenge. I would like to have it ready for my Son’s birthday in early a June, what are my chances? ;-)
Thanks to all the forum for your invaluable information & experience in helping me get this far.
Cheers, David

[UtahBeehiver]

Nothing wrong with repurposing. I do not see what you are using for insulation under the floor bricks. If if is just sand or mortar, the oven floor will have a difficult time keeping hot especially since the floor bricks appear to be thin, ie 25 mm or so and what heat will transmit down through the floor.

[Tintan28]

Hi Russell,

I have about 100mm of vermiculite/cement mix. I first laid 50mm of sand over 50mm of vermiculite mix to cut the shape then thought I better replace the sand with more vermiculite, which I bedded the bricks onto. The heater bricks are about 40mm thick.

Feel free to critique, I appreciate it.

David

[UtahBeehiver]

40mm is still a little thin but having the 100mm of vcrete will help with thermal loss. You do not say what the vcrete ration is (5 to 1 typically for floors and 8-10 to 1 for dome). Just be aware that the IT configuration and the wood cross braces will increase the dome height that the same distance the pivot point is off the floor level.

[MarkJerling]

After years of wishful thinking & tentative research, I’ve finally got around to starting my salvaged heater brick oven. I chose to do it with heater bricks & home brew as I the bricks were readily available to me & I like the idea of repurposing them & other than the fire clay powder the other aggregates I have, plus firebricks & refractory mortar were just too expensive to justify using to my mind.
It’s certainly not going to rival some of the masterpieces on here (Bradmole, for instance) but hopefully it’ll do the job. Really enjoying it so far, but I can see the arch which is next up being a challenge. I would like to have it ready for my Son’s birthday in early a June, what are my chances? ;-)
Thanks to all the forum for your invaluable information & experience in helping me get this far.
Cheers, David

Welcome to the forum! Nice to see someone else using nightstore heater bricks! Feel free to have a look at my oven which uses the exact same bricks. I found that the little ledge in the bricks were perfect for creating the curve of the dome. I see you're doing the same by placing the cut edge to the inside.

[Tintan28]

Russell, I laid 2no course flat & set the IT to correspond with this, before starting the corbeling so I was aware that the height would be greater than the radius. I thought that I’d read that this was standard practice? I presume this isn’t an issue & will not cause me problems down the line?

Mark, thanks for the welcome. Yes the profile conveniently suits the corbeling of the bricks. It’s good to read that the bricks are good at storing the heat which I was confident of given that’s the purpose in their original guise. I’d be interested to hear how robust they have been since you started firing yours as that is my only concern using them.

Regards,

David

[UtahBeehiver]

The offset of the pivot point on the IT will affect how a tapered inner arch (it you do this type of arch) is profiled since the radii changes as you move up in course. I just mentioned this so you can make adjustment and you move up, hence the need for an adjustable IT.

[Tintan28]

Thanks Russell for the help. If I’m being honest, I’m winging it & not really working to a set plan. Although I respect & appreciate the time, effort, skill & planning that has gone into a lot of the domes on here, my gut feeling is it’s a bit over the top as most of the work/detail is unseen. For me it’s a bit of a fun challenge that I’m happy to make mistakes & rectify if necessary.
I understand that some may think I’m a philistine of the Pompeii oven world but I’ve a thick skin & happy to listen to all opinions.
David

[UtahBeehiver]

It is just easier and saves anguish, materials and time if you plan ahead of potential issues that builders from the past have experienced. Easy to correct on paper........harder once the mortar sets but your choice, we often see builders come to us after the fact about an issue or problem and many times there is nothing that can be done at that point.

[Tintan28]

Cheers Russell, I don’t want to appear arrogant (more likely ignorant!) or unappreciative of your wisdom, as I feel what you & others do on here is brilliant.
The way I was approaching my build is from looking at both really neat builds with little mortar & precise cuts to should we say more rustic ones where the mortar is more prevalent. And my train of thought was that once covered in insulation etc the difference is less obvious & so if they both bake good pizza & hold heat to bake bread or slow roasts then to me that’s the raison d’etre.
My personality flaw is that I’m more of a let’s crack on type than a methodical planner type. It has its pros & cons but serves me reasonably well. It’s takes all sorts & the worlds a better & more interesting place for it, imho.
You are invariably correct though & I’ll most probably be have the odd issue and be begging for your assistance! ;-)
David

[MarkJerling]

Russell, I laid 2no course flat & set the IT to correspond with this, before starting the corbeling so I was aware that the height would be greater than the radius. I thought that I’d read that this was standard practice? I presume this isn’t an issue & will not cause me problems down the line?

Mark, thanks for the welcome. Yes the profile conveniently suits the corbeling of the bricks. It’s good to read that the bricks are good at storing the heat which I was confident of given that’s the purpose in their original guise. I’d be interested to hear how robust they have been since you started firing yours as that is my only concern using them.

Regards,

David

Thanks for your reply David. Yes, the brick have been interesting. As you'll see from my build I managed to find different nightstore heater bricks for the floor. These appear much harder than the "dark-red" bricks. Also the nightstore heater bricks soak up water quite quickly so I learnt to keep the rain off the oven while building it was a good idea. I used a tarpaulin and a large portable gazebo to keep it dry(ish) while working on it.

The "dark-red" bricks from different heaters from the same manufacturer seem to be of varying quality: While all are heavy, some seem to have a finer, denser and harder consistency while others seem to be more crumbly and consisting out of larger bits. Before I started my dome, I sorted the bricks and did most of of the cut in half work. I then set the really nice and dense ones aside for the top of the dome and for the first lower courses and I used the less dense ones inbetween.

I discarded about 6 or 8 bricks as completely unsuitable. Those crumbled when cut. Interestingly, even after quite a number of pizza evenings, the bricks all seem to handle the heat well, even the more crumbly ones. Heat retention is excellent, as is to be expected and even though I did not use an IT at all, the dome worked out well with only some minor errors where the door arch meets the dome.

I suppose I could have worked neater but I've never laid bricks before so it was a steep learning curve! In the end, it works well and that's all that matters.

Good luck with your project. I look forward to seeing the completed oven!

Kind regards,
Mark

[Tintan28]

Mark,
It’s reassuring to read about the robustness of the brick in your oven so far.
The performance also seems to be excellent which is definitely the most positive news. The fact that it might be a bit messy is not a big issue. I’d like to make a neat job of mine but that is a secondary concern to enabling me to cook good good for a good few years at a price that I can justify.
I’ll try to keep posting progress updates.
Regards,
David

[MarkJerling]

Well, David, your brickwork is looking good so far as I can see. I did not think to cut each brick in half in the other direction as well, as you have done. I suspect yours will be neater than mine. But yes, the heat retention is excellent. You'll see I posted some temperature graphs in my build thread. It's great for cooking roasts and bread on the night following a pizza night.
Regards,
Mark

[Tintan28]

Hi Mark,

Thanks, I’m certainly trying without becoming anal about the neatness.

When you say “It’s great for cooking roasts and bread on the night following a pizza night.” Do you mean for instance, if the Friday night was pizza night you could bake bread on the Saturday night or later on on the Friday night?

The weather has been crap at nights here this week so mainly it’s stayed under polythene. I’d did make an arch template but I think it needs tweaking as the bricks are not sitting correct.

Regards,

David

[Tintan28]

I got the inner arch completed today after foul weather over the last week. You’ll notice that I forgot to allow to pack the former up with shims to enable easier dismantling. However I unscrewed it & took it apart when the mortar was still green & this allowed me to point it up underneath which was an unplanned bonus. It never moved a bit so I was happy with the outcome. Not sure if I’ve quite got the rear cuts correct but hopefully it’ll work out ok.