foundation to first pizza in 4 1/2 hours

[maxvega]

great idea. Have you ever measured the temperature on the cooking surface to see how hot it get's? How long does it usually take to cook a pizza once the oven is at temperature?

Thanks,

Max

[TimmyNY]

I have never measured the temp of the oven as I don't have anything to do it with. It takes about an hour and a half to get it up to temp. It gets hot enough to burn all the soot off the inside and will burn the hair off your arm in about half a sec so I think it gets pretty hot. It cooks a pizza in about 3 or 4 min. Ive tried to cook bread in it once but once you take the fire out it cools faster than a normal brick oven. Still I was able to bake a few loaves at once. just don't know if it would bake a second batch.

I got tired of having to replace the pavers every year because of the frost heaving the base in the winter so this spring I poured a 6 inch reinforced concrete base under it. Ill let you know how it works in the spring.


Good luck and have fun building your oven how ever you decide to

Tim

[bjg]

I got surface temps up to 950 on the floor and over 1000 on the top. It does cool very quickly though like Timmy said. And I agree with the rest of his reply too. I would suggest placing the floor firebricks on edge to get some extra thermal mass for the floor. You'll obviously need twice as much firebrick but I think it would be worth it.

[jislizard]

Nice work, I have been wondering how I am going to build a support for pouring the concrete landing and having seen your angle iron and suspended brick construction it has given me an idea to do something similar and then top it off with concrete.

Might even look at something similar for the base of the BBQ, that way I can incorporate a few gaps for the air to get sucked in.

Cheers for the inspiration

[jdcigar]

does anyone still use this pizza oven? I have built one but so far I am having trouble getting the heat to stay on the floor for very long once I push the coals to the side.

[dmun]

With all due respect to quick and cheap solutions, there is a real reason to insulate your oven, all around. The reason: keeping the heat where you need it, as you have observed.

[jdcigar]

Do you have any suggestions on how to accomplish?

[bjg]

I used to move the coals back into the center of the floor once it started cooling. Leave them there for at least five minutes and the floor will come back up in temp. Push them aside again and keep firing pizzas. Not optimal but certainly worked.

[okn]

How many bricks do you think you used?

[jdcigar]

I probably used about 175, 100 standard and 75 firebrick