Gas Heated oven

[Keith Oertli]

I am interested in building an oven with a Gas heating system like the ones in commercial pizza ovens.

Doesanyone have experience with this?

[ColonelCorn76]

I built a couple of burners for mine. Neither was based on a commercial design though. One was for radiant heat during pizza cooking and the other to fire the oven when I didn't want to bother with wood (or didn't have any).

The first used a 35K gas grill replacement burner and sits against the side wall. It's attached to the gas by a slip fit into a 3/4" black gas pipe coming through the wall (best to use a drill press to make the hole before closing the oven in or a 1/2" heavy duty drill after the oven is closed up). The outside gets capped with a quick fit & a hose with quick fits goes between it & a standard 20lb tank. I didn't use it so I ended up closing the pipe in when I housed my oven (although if you crawl in my oven and look over your right shoulder you can see where the pipe used to come through the brick.

The big burner I made out of a turkey fryer gas burner, 4' of 3/4" black pipe, a bundh of brass fittings to make the fittings from the burner to the pipe and on the other end from the hose supplied with the burner to the pipe. That all hooks into a standard propane tank and churns out 150K btu --- enough to heat the oven without wood. This is good for bread baking or roasting as it gets the oven hot fast and I don't have to kill the fire or pull it out still burning.

I found my turkey fryer at Lowes on a season end sale a year or so ago and was lucky to get it cheap ($20 ish?) with a big burner (they're not all 150K btu). I've got plans for a forge burner I've built in the past (for a home forge) that runs the same btu rating. It uses standard gas piping, some fittings and a welding torch nozzle for the jet. There are a bunch of those designs out on the 'net for folks who do a little home forging.

Jim

[Keith Oertli]

Thanks Jim, I will investigate.

I am not familiar with 'home forging'. I'll check it out.

Do you use your gas sytem often?

I love the use of wood, but beleive my customers would welcome a Gas option that has professional controls.

In my next personal oven, I plan to incorporate Gas into the design. My first oven was/is an Alan Scott design. It works well.

I have since constructed 4 Pompeii's and have become quite impressed with them I don't know if I will ever build another Alan Scott style.

K.O.

[ColonelCorn76]

There's a whole sub-culture of home forging enthusiasts out there -- people who use them for blacksmithing or art. Ron Reil is a great resource (http://www.reil1.net/index.shtml) as is Larry Zoeller (http://www.geocities.com/zoellerforge/). Ron & Larry have done a lot of work on burner design and their stuff works. No need to reinvent the wheel. The sidearm burner is an awful like Chas Hone's commercial burner that's pictured in Dan Wing's book.

I use mine when I want to cook bread without pizza first. That way I can bring it to temp and then pull the burner out. No raking burning wood out or waiting for the fire to drop down.

If I were going commercial I'd chase down one of those vertical burner systems that are about 18" long x 12" tall (commercial size...wonder if they've got something a bit smaller for a smaller oven) that I've seen in the back of a few pizzaria ovens. Seems like a very controllable way to keep the pizzas cooking.

The Scott oven I built was okay (especially since I didn't know what I really wanted yet) but it heats too slowly for me. I just don't have the patience to wait for all that mass to heat up & 80% of the time all of that stored heat goes to waste anyway as all I want is a round of pizzas or a half-dozen loaves of bread.

Jim