Too much chicken wire?

[Vivi88]

Hey guys,

I'm nearly at the perlite insulation stage of my pizza oven build. I have put in the fibre blanket insulation and have secured that with chicken wire. While I was putting on the wire, I found it very difficult to maintain just one layer of wire around the whole dome, so I ended up putting on about 2 or 3 layers of chicken wire around the dome.

My main concern is that with heat the wire might expand and move around a bit and cause more cracking than usual on the outer layer (perlite insulation/cement). But on the other hand, I figured once the perlite insulation has set, the wire will be held in place and movement of it will be restricted.

What are your opinions on this? Should I go back and remove the other layers and just try and maintain just one layer of chicken wire, or will there be no harm in keeping the additional layers?

[david s]

Leave it as it is. It. will not cause problems with expansion. The chicken wire in that place just holds the blanket into position. Because the perlcrete or vermicrete layer that sits over it is so weak the chicken wire does little to strengthen that layer. To be of any use it needs to be in the middle of the layer. It is quite time consuming too, so for those reasons I don’t use any chicken wire there at all. It is also counter-productive to have a conductive material in the middle of insulation layers. If you want it for strength then it’s better placed in the middle of the outer shell layer.