Location of Pizza oven - considerations

[christo]

I've been thinking about building an oven for quite some time.

I'm in the material scrouging mode right now and have found all the block I need through my contractor friends. They call me when they have some scrap to clean up. Now to find rebar and mesh....

But, I am now past the point of no return - my wife is sick of seeing the pile of block in the yard. The ground is soft and I'm going to get started!

My masterplan includes a patio with outdoor kitchen centered on the back of the house.

I was going to incorporate the oven into the outdoor kitchen, but now I'm afraid that the oven will create a ton of smoke that will send all my guests on the patio and deck home smelling like smoke.

Anybody out there have some guidelines about oven placement (Distance from house, from outdoor kitchen, etc.)? Do I just need to put a really tall chimney on the oven?

Thanks,

Christo

[james]

Hey Christo,

I just saw this posting, and see that we all overlooked it.

You don't have to worry about smoking out your guests. Pizza ovens put out a little smoke when they are heating up, but after the fire is going they only exhaust hot air. It's like a catalytic converter that burns the smoke to reduced particulates. The pizza oven gets, and cooks, so hot that wood burns very cleanly, and leaves very little ash. In that way, it is very much unlike a fireplace. As you are likely to have started firing your oven before company even arrives, no one will see much smoke.

James