Finally closed my oven!

[Jonathontd]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Thanks for the inspiration. I am just starting the 2nd course of a low dome and it looks daunting. Yours has inspired me to be even more exact with my work.

[Rodneyf]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

That's great I hope you enjoy your build as much as I did but don't worry about being too exact as the only person that will know is you. I have a few joints that I think I could have done better but in the end the oven works and the pizzas taste great. In Australia we have a lot of BBQs and you usually find that the men hang around the BBQ and the women sit around talking, I found that with the oven everybody is at the oven looking in to try and watch the dough rise and the cheese bubble. Good luck!

Picasa Web Albums - rodneyaf - Pizza oven

[Andrew Beal]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Did you cut nd grind the bricks with the rounded edges yourself or did you get them already rounded off? It looks really good. Ive got a truckload of old red bricks that I was planning on using. But they dont look as dense as yours. Mine look like clay. They are probably around 60 years old New Zealand bricks. Not sure if they will be ok to use or not. I have about 50 second hand firebricks as well

[Rodneyf]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

That is how the "Bullnose" bricks come in Aus. The bricks I used were very dense and did not crumble at all, I think they were the ones closest to the fire during firing and that was 92 yrs ago.

[3G_]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Great build Rodney.
What did you use to render the outer dome.
Did you use extra steel or just the mesh holding the insulation in?
Your rendered dome is one of the best ive seen and the bench top looks great.
Im curing mine at the moment, its had 36 hours on the smallest ring of a 3 ring burner, the dome is around 90 degrees at the top.
Well done again
Gregg

[Rodneyf]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Gregg, thanks for the comment on the rendering I did try hard and it turned out the way I had imagined it would. I only used the ckicken wire to give the render something to hang on to. The trick is to take your time when doing the wire and cut, twist and stretch the wire to get a perfect dome shape. The render mix was a simple 4 parts sand 1 part off white cement and 1/2 a cup of Australian builders brand "sandstone" oxide from Bunnings. I also mixed my water with Silasec to the recomended strength to make the whole thing water proof.The other thing to remember is to make sure the render can expand along all directions of your arch, by this I mean that if the render is attached to your arch on an edge it will crack during expansion across the dome as your arch expands, where if it is coming into contact with your arch on the rear flat surface it will crack along the joint between the arch and render which is not a problem at all. I am not sure if I have explained this well but if you PM me I will give you my phone number and I can help you that way. Good luck!

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Rodney,

Nice work, your dome looks perfect

Cheers
Mark

[Rodneyf]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Well, it has been 4 years since I posted here and it has taken me that long to put a roof over the oven. I thought about the type of roof I wanted for a long time and came up with something very Australian that I think works in my backyard.
I have had many pizza nights with the oven and at the end of the nights I have had to cover the oven with a tarp in case of rain.
This roof is made up of curved colorbond steel over hand bent tubular steel.that has all been galvanized to stop any rust ruining my work in the future.
The great thing about having a roof is that the smoke is above the roof and gone before it gets in your eyes.

[brickie in oz]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Is the roof anchored down below the brick piers?
If not it may just blow off with a big gust.

[Rodneyf]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Yeah, she is down with concrete footings under the piers.

[brickie in oz]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

So no anchor from concrete to roof? Or am I misreading this?

[david s]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Yeah, she is down with concrete footings under the piers.

it will need to be. With a curved roof like that it will act just like an aircraft wing in strong wind from the right direction. In the last cyclone we had our roof, which is quite flat with a low angle bend in the middle of long continuous steel decking with screws on the leading and trailing edge, wanting to take off. It was lifting in the middle, thinking it was a Jumbo jet wing, making a loud boom in extreme wind gusts, as the middle got sucked up by the lower air pressure there. That's when we decided to shelter downstairs. a roof with a higher pitch is actually safer in these conditions.

[Rodneyf]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

The footings have 8 bags of concrete in them with the 4 around the oven going under the slab, the posts have 24 x 10mm dyna bolts holding them to the piers and there is not a rivet in the whole thing only nuts and bolts, so it is not going anywhere. I am in Sydney and we don't get cyclones and where I am in Sydney we don't get the extreme weather of the north and west areas that bring the high winds.
The roof goes east to west so westerlies will go through it and it is sheltered from the big southerlies by the house.
I don't think I will have a problem and everyone that has watched the build says that I have over engineered the frame as I usually do.

[brickie in oz]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Dyna bolts into a brick pier is not a hold down anchor, but good luck with it all.

[david s]

Re: Finally closed my oven!

Rodney,
I was not suggesting you haven't taken due care to make it strong enough, I was just using this as an example to tell my story. Where we live, in cyclone area buildings are required to have the roof tied to the slab, or footings by steel.
Sure you'll be fine.
Dave