Vent assembly cracking

[Marc Olson]

I installed a Casa 110 this summer at my cabin. I cured the oven before wrapping the insulation and saw some minor hairline cracks in the oven chamber. Subsequent uses (five or six pizza sessions) showed no 'serious' cracks.

However, both parts of the vent assembly have cracked, the upper part cracking just a week ago.

I've thought about purchasing replacement parts OR reinforcing the vent assembly with metal strips and then re-mortaring.

Thoughts on what would cause the late cracking and the best course of action?

Marc

[james]

Hi Marc,

Sorry about that. That is surprising and almost never happens (but you can never say never with brick ovens). Still, it is not too bad. Do you think any smoke is escaping through the vent pieces. If not, you might not have to do anything. If you want to tackle this, you should be able pack mortar around the vent and hold it together. I have to admit that I did a test installation of an oven (Casa110) that the freight company had dropped and completely broken into pieces -- just to see what would happen. We pieced all of the broken vent pieces together and packed it with mortar. That was two years ago and the oven is doing fine.

Of course if you want to replace the pieces, we will happily send them to you.

Let me know how it goes and what you think.
James

[Marc Olson]

There is a little smoke escaping, but nothing serious. I have to still mortar in the entire assembly as I was never shipped the metal adaptor to attach the stovepipe to the vent assembly. I was planning to call tomorrow to arrange that piece to be sent.

Should the metal adapter have been included with the rest of the kit?

My view on the cracks is that the worst thing that can happen is that I'll have to piece it back together. So far it's holding fine, but once I have the rest of the chimmney I'll reinforce it and mortar it in place and see how it does.

The oven is fantastic, BTW. I'll post some pictures now that I'm back in the land of high speed Internet.

[james]

Sounds good.
Let's mortar all of that together and see how it goes. The metal chimney adapter is an extra option that is not part of the oven. That is because you can use different chimney systems, and the adapters are specific to the chimney pipe. You can also use refractory clay chimney -- hey, we're flexible.
James

[Marc Olson]

I had a chance to take a quick look at the vent on Saturday. Seems like the best route would be to support it in the middle and then mortar front, top and back to encase it. The cracks run through the front and back for both top and bottom pieces.

Would adding a metal strip to the top of the lower assembly for reinforcement (or the bottom for that matter) be recommended, or will the expansion differential create more problems down the road?