Newbe

[Food&Fish]

Hi from melbourne i have had an oven for a while scratch built with a gas override [good for long cooks]looking foward to chatting with you

[nissanneill]

Hi Food&Fish and welcome aboard.
Another name to add to the Aussie contingent within this forum.
Good to see that you have an oven and now you can share the cooking side of it.
What plans did you follow with your build?
How do you find it's performance?
How does it hold it's temperature/
Is it much different in construction from the free plans for the Pompeii here? and what do you mainly use it for?

Cheers.

Neill

[Food&Fish]

Originally Posted by nissanneill

Hi Food&Fish and welcome aboard.
Another name to add to the Aussie contingent within this forum.
Good to see that you have an oven and now you can share the cooking side of it.
What plans did you follow with your build?
How do you find it's performance?
How does it hold it's temperature/
Is it much different in construction from the free plans for the Pompeii here? and what do you mainly use it for?

Cheers.

Neill

Hi Neill thanks for the welcome
To answer your questions plans no plans i had not heard of these forums when i built the oven
We will put performance and temp in the same
biggest mistake i made is not insulating the bottom [ this can be fixed i thought 2 rows of fire bricks 4 in would have been enough]
Construction when i find the photos i will post [every brick on the dome is tapered 4 sides] i have a diamond brick saw
Ah yes use pizza roasts and just getting into bread
I have a gas override [gas gun burner from an overhead heating unit like in bunnings stores ] just working on a temp controler at the moment

[Food&Fish]

Ok heres a few

[Food&Fish]

And another

[Food&Fish]

i have never been happy with the floor temp OK after reading all the good info on here i have dug a hole in the floor of the oven there's 5 in of 1200 deg fire brick on the floor [this can be dug out easy] how would you do the floor i need to keep the 5 in measurement
Thanks in anticipation

[nissanneill]

Hi,
I can see a few fatal mistakes from the pics.
Firstly, you one hell of thermal mass, looks like 9" thick dome wall! You must go through some wood to get that mother hot!
It should hold the temperature if you have it well insulted but as you claim, you didn't insulate the floor and as such lose alot of heat through that.
Also, your door looks way too high for the dome height.
It is claimed that a max of 63% of dome height is ideal, the taller the door, the more heat is lost. This can be reduced easily by putting in a false panel in the arch trapping more heat in (or reducing the escape of the heat).

i have never been happy with the floor temp. How would you do the floor

If I were to inherit your oven I would kill two birds with one stone. By this I mean that I would remove your firebrick hearth back to the concrete slab, get at least 2" of good insulation board, cut to fit inside your oven and sliding the bits in to assemble them inside the oven. The second 1" layer, I would stagger the joint(s) or rotate them 90˚an then re-install my hearth brick base.
This would reduce your oven internal height a little which would also reduce your door height, (even though the top of your door would still be higher than it should be).
I hope that this helps.

Cheers.

Neill

PS. Do you have the outside insulated?

[Food&Fish]

Hi thanks for responding
Insulated yes its insulated with that 1200 deg white stuff used for heat treating furnace then pink bats and the covering is white cement and lime When running you can put your beer on the top no worries
As i said when i built it i hadent heard of the internet

[DrakeRemoray]

Cool oven thanks for sharing!

I do think you should dig out your floor brick and get some insulation under there if possible. In any case, you will be able to bake a lot of bread in that oven once you get that mass all charged up. Do you ever get the dome to go white (get the soot to burn off) when you fire it?

[Food&Fish]

Hi yes it always goes white takes about 1 1/2 hrs
i light it by putting the wood pile in the back turning on the gas and almost closing the door after 3/4 hrs its 400deg open the door and turn off the gas with the oxygen the wood bursts into life after another 3/4 hr its ready to cook with this i have cooked pizza from 100 till 4 with no extra wood after that just kick the gas back in and you can cook tea