New WFO in Perth

[JRPizza]

Hi Yandi, good to see you have started a build thread. Have you gotten the placement of your one-piece arch figured out yet? Most of us building hemispherical arches vary the thickness of the arch bricks, as well as the angle at the top of the arch. Your solid arch might add a few challenges to the dome arch intersection, so it will be interesting to see what solutions you come up with.
Please post some pictures soon - there are a bunch of experienced builders on this site (I'm not one of them) that will be able to offer guidance for pretty much every step of your build.

[yandi]

Yes will do that and cut them down to 1" thick plus blanket will do a good job

[UtahBeehiver]

IFB are only for insulating, not where they are exposed. You can use them on the dome but only on the outside of the regular fire brick. They are too soft to be exposed in the inside of the dome face.

[yandi]

Thanks for that UtahBeehiver , they are exactly how you described , I got them at very good price from friend of mine.. I got told to use them on dome as well so will do that as well, its good to have extra insulation.. Thanks again

[UtahBeehiver]

Yandi,

If the insulating fire bricks (IFB) are truly insulating (they are very light, can be scored easily with a knife and have a porous character to them) they are fine for insulating "under" your fire brick hearth. Typically IFBs are really expensive relative to regular fire bricks and are more costly then other forms of insulation, ie ceramic fiber board, perlite/vermiculate-concrete mix. That said, I have seen several Southern Hemi builds where IFB were used as insulation, it is what your budget can afford. I would also post this in the Aussie region forum and those folks can give you a heads up on local suppliers.

[yandi]

Hi everyone, so happy to build my WFO and getting material together and this forum is helping me a lot to understand things I need to do.. I got some refractory insulation light weight bricks that I was going to use for heart insulation. They perform well at 1400 degrees C as they would reflect the heat away from concrete slab. Can someone tell me please is this a good idea??