Help! Newbie Qld Aust-Hebel Bricks? Introductions Discuss Help! Newbie Qld Aust-Hebel Bricks? in the Good Background Information forums; Hi all, Love the forum, first time ever joining a forum or posting a question. We are planning to build ...

[bouchee]

Hi all, Love the forum, first time ever joining a forum or posting a question. We are planning to build and wondered if there is a place to use Hebel Blocks we saw a tv show recently that used them to build the stand /base and then they had bought the pizza oven and put it on top. Would value any comments anyone has. Also if anyone has any contacts of supppliers around the Sunshine Coast area of Queensland.
Manys thanks for your time
John

[nissanneill]

Hi John and welcome aboard,
the Hebel range of building materials have many advantages over traditional products but are limited to weight and thermal effeciency, ie. insulating benefits. I just checked on the Hebel site and they claim:

a 75mm Hebel® panel has up to 5 times the R-Value of a 110mm house brick

which is not what you want in the oven as a heat store.
Use it by all means for your base and possibly the slab but I would not use it for the dome at all. There are better insulating materials which are also easier to use.

Neill

[Knackers]

plus the glues + the fact that you can scratch it. bits of hebel will be falling on your pizza.... you might as well use plasterboard.

keep with the traditional materials

[carioca]

Hello there!

Wouldn't waste good money on $11/ea. Hebel blocks for the stand - you might find some old Besser blocks in your yard, or can pick them up second-hand cheaply... since you are likely to render them anyway, it won't matter how grotty they may be!

I built my stand from Besser blocks left over from a house build 20-odd years ago - see Picasa Web Albums - carioca - Forno_del_gallo .

(Also built a shed some 5 years back from the Hebel blocks, mainly because they were light, covered big distances quickly and only cost around $5 at the time.)

Have fun!

LMH

[Bacterium]

John....ages ago I used Hebel to line a little charcoal bbq box.....after heating it a few times it seems to crack and crumble(get brittle)....might work fine sandwiched between two materials but yeah no good for a dome etc.

[crowtrapper]

Interesting thread. I have used Hebel panels (1200mm x 600mm) for the insulating layer under the firebrick hearth - figure they will be good enough insulation for that. And I am also using a piece of Hebel panel for a lintel on top of the oven entrance, because it is a convenient material to work to shape (and I had a piece the right size left over from the hearth). At present I am also considering using Hebel blocks (or bits of them) to construct the chimney - but am not sure yet because the lintel may not take the weight.
It is SO difficult around here to find supplies for a WFO, no second hand stove chimneys or flue adaptors at all, new metal flues terribly expensive, fire bricks $7 each (second hand common bricks 40c to 80c each!!!). So there is a need to improvise.
But definitely the Hebel blocks would be no good in the dome, they have a very crumbly surface and would be damaged too easily, not to mention their lack of thermal mass.
However, I have seen a functional pizza oven that was built for nothing in a weekend by unskilled hands, using junk materials - you can get away with quite a lot!