36" Pompeii Build Redux - This Time In CA

[rsandler]

Great looking loaves! What was the bake time?

About 25 minutes. Forgot to immediately set a timer after the first time I checked on them, so not sure the precise time. They were very tasty also!

[rsandler]

Started my decorative arch yesterday. Made L-shaped thin bricks so as to bond to both the firebrick vent arch and the cement board exterior wall. The bricks are from a big stack of old clinker bricks left to us by the previous owner of the house. Apparently all reclaimed from a 100+ year old hotel demolished in nearby Sacramento. I had been thinking of doing similar brick veneer for the base and counter walls (plan for the rest of the enclosure walls is stucco/render), but realized that while "no extra money cost" is a nice feature of that idea, "making ~900 brick cuts" is a bit of a drawback :-P. Now thinking of shelling out for natural or cultured stone veneer from the nearby brick yard.

But anyway, the clinkers make a nice decorative arch, and I think I'm going to continue upward with the bricks to the roofline, as if the whole "chimney" were protruding from the wall.

In other oven news, I got the final sign-off from the city building inspector, so my oven is now fully legal and permitted.

[JRPizza]

I hadn't paid enough attention to your build to notice what you were doing with your door. Would you consider doing some posts on the Show us your Door Thread? It's a good place to capture new innovations.

https://community.fornobravo.com/for...ur-door-thread

[rsandler]

Good point--I think I got the idea from a passing remark in the Show us your Door thread, I should pay it forward and post there.

I think I'm finally done for the season with the oven, though we'll see how the weather and my motivation work out :-P. I put up the rest of my chimney veneer and grouted with mortar over the Thanksgiving week. I pinged a couple of granite countertop fabricators about countertops, but I'm probably going to wait on actually moving forward until spring.

[rsandler]

Had a bit of good weather in the last week, so I started on my counter frames. Bigger advance is I added lights. This time of year, making pizza in the dark is a pain; the light of the fire isn't quite enough to see what I'm doing. So, I set up a 100W solar panel on the roof, wired to a controller and a 12V battery that sits inside the enclosure frame. A cheap DC rocker switch and a string of LED strip lights, and I go from this (except darker--my Pixel 8 is way too good at taking pictures in the dark):


To this:



Looking forward to next week's pizza bake! A few more pics of my lighting setup, plus the sunset was pretty behind the oven as I wrapped up today.

[rsandler]

Have had some additional spells of nice weather, punctuated by some really torrential rain. During the former, I finished building my counter wings, and also got a base coat of stucco/render on the enclosure. Also, we paid a contractor to redo and expand our (pretty sketchy) existing concrete patio so that it's both (a) flat and (b) extends all the way to the oven foundation. Between the counters, the lights, and a good place to stand, last weekend's pizza bake was just dreamy :-).

May get some more work done in the next couple weeks during breaks in the weather, particularly taping and mudding the joints in the cement board. However, we need to make some aesthetic decisions before going much further. As I see it, the color coat of stucco should go on before the veneer on the base, and the veneer before the countertop material. But the veneer and the stucco need to match each other, and especially match the counters. So, need to pick a type of veneer and counter before going any further, then find a color pack to match those...decisions, decisions.

Not sure if it'll happen, but the ideal would be to get counters installed in time to do a pizza party some time in the spring. We'll see!

[AJH]

How's that door holding up?
I've got some plans bouncing around my noggin to build a similar one when I get to that point. I'll use some expanded metal as a framework, possibly fill the inside with loose perlite/verm/CF blanket, wrap a layer of CF Blanket around the expanded metal, then cover it with the nomex felt. I think the Nomex and CF Blanket will keep the worst of the heat from the expanded metal and the holes in the metal might reduce the heat transfer along the metal. It should make for a rigid core with a soft outer layer for a good seal against the door bricks.

[rsandler]

Hey AJH . Door is holding up very well--still seems firm and holding together, and generally keeping heat in very well. Only blip is that my outer wood fascia has cracked a bit at the glue line on the right side. My thinking is that it's less a failure of the wood or the glue, but rather due to the placement of the metal handles. I think after a very hot fire the metal expanded faster than the wood, and pulled the glue joint apart. In hindsight, having the handles span the glue joint was a mistake. Ah well--still works, still looks reasonably nice.

In other oven news, I finished mounting cement board and did the stucco color coat over the last few months; planning to get the stone veneer on the base some time this spring.

[rsandler]

Little bit of progress on the aesthetic bits, but haven't shared pictures in a while. Finished the countertop structures and put stucco on the enclosure a while ago, and this week started stone veneer around the base. Just corner pieces so far, but starting to look promising.

[rsandler]

Made a bit more progress on the stone veneer over the last few months, though it's been just stupidly hot here in northern CA; well over half the days in July have been over 100F. I've been popping out to my garage woodshop in little bits to work on project there, but it's been too hot to stay out for the 1-2 hours necessary to make use of a reasonable batch of thinset. But it finally cooled off the last couple days, so I made some progress. This picture is a bit old--I've since finished the short end on the right side, as well as maybe half to two thirds of the back since it was taken.

In other news, my Nomex door coating has not held up after all. Mostly it's fine, but along the edges where it's folder, it has deteriorated and started to tear. I ordered some carbon felt welding blanket as an alternative, and have pinned it to the outside (with the pins through the nomex closest to the wood, where the heat has been less. The welding blanket has more "squishiness" to it than the nomex, so I'm hoping it makes a slightly better seal as well.

Hoping to order countertops some time this month!

[RandyJ]

Hey rsandler have you been able to get any more done on your oven? I have once again been forging ahead with my oven. I am hoping to get everything water resistant before it freezes. As it is I just managed to get my roof more or less done. I need more chimney but it is on order. I also just finished my lighting. You were the inspiration for what I did. I may have gotten a bit carried away but that is what these projects are for. I ended up using 28M or almost 92' of govee M1 led strip and diffuser Chanel. The lighting effects are incredibly vivid and white light is completely capable of allowing you to read.

Randy

[rsandler]

Hey Randy, cool stuff on the lights. I've been puttering along on the stone veneer, and have it mostly done, but I'm travelling this week so can't take pictures. Still need to fill some of the gaps with mortar (1/2-3/4 done with that task), but all the stones are up (well, actually I'll still need to put in about 3 more pieces, because I don't know exactly where the countertops will end around my landing until they install them). Countertop contractor is booked, just waiting for them to get the material delivered.

[nlinva]

I didn't want to hijack daidensacha 's thread, but I saw you posted there that your 2nd oven performs very differently than the first. I'd be very interested in hearing more about what those differences are and in whether you can pinpoint the causes of those differences in different choices you made during the build.

[rsandler]

I didn't want to hijack daidensacha 's thread, but I saw you posted there that your 2nd oven performs very differently than the first. I'd be very interested in hearing more about what those differences are and in whether you can pinpoint the causes of those differences in different choices you made during the build.

Mostly that this oven holds heat much, much better than my old one. The old oven, if I fired just enough to make pizza, then put the door on, it would be 300-350F the next morning. I'd need to put a few more rounds of fuel in after the pizza bake, or else toss a few logs onto the coals in the morning, if I wanted to bake bread the next day at 450. New oven, it's reliably 400-450F after a "just pizzas" fire, and I've had awkward moments where I put a couple rounds of logs in after pizza, and had the oven still at 550 in the morning, and needed to leave it with the door open to cool off before the bread could go in. Seems like the best way to hit a 475F oven in the morning (allowing for some drop off while scraping out ashes) is to just let the last logs from the pizza fire burn themselves down in the center of the dome before closing up, but I haven't fully dialed it in yet. A couple weeks ago, I did that, planning to bake bread the next day, but completely forgot to come back and put the door on. I woke up out of a sound sleep at 3am suddenly realizing my mistake, staggered out in a bathrobe in the dark to put the door on. In the morning it was still around 350; a quick morning fire got it up to bread temps. Wild stuff.

As to why, I think it's a combination of moisture and insulation. The door is a factor--my new door is thicker insulation and seals better than my old one--but mostly it's I used a bunch more insulation on the dome itself (see story above where the door was left off). My old oven had 4" of CalSil underneath and 3-5" of CF blanket on top. New oven has 6" of CalSil underneath, 5-7" of blanket, and also the enclosure is filled with loose perlite. Mind you, I'm pretty sure this is overkill, but as I talk about in this thread, I had excess material for various reasons, so went ahead and just used it. I'm also pretty sure I fitted the blanket a lot tighter this time also--cutting pizza-slice triangles out of the top edge of each roll so that it fit snuggly around the curve of the dome, rather than bunching.

Alternately, might be that this oven stays dryer. I had my DC oven pretty well sealed, but it was igloo shaped with no cover, and as you surely know living in VA, it rains all year round in DC. I also didn't use the weep holes and tile layer now recommended, as that innovation hadn't been introduced on the forum when I built oven #1.

Well that was long-winded, but I hope it helps!

Theoretically we might be getting counters installed this week around the oven, though the countertop contractor has been annoyingly squirrely, so we'll see.

[nlinva]

Thanks, super helpful! Even your first oven had a good quantity of insulation, so it's fascinating to hear what a difference further insulation can still (apparently) make.

As you note, I'm close enough to DC that my weather here is pretty similar to your first oven's, and I'm also keeping mine igloo-shaped (in large part because I just really like the shape and don't want to lose that to an enclosure). I do have the weep holes and tiles -- maybe the latter will help a bit on the insulation front (harder for heat to leak down through the slab). Sounds like I should expect a performance closer to your first oven (which is already very good, of course); will be interesting to see how it turns out!