Need advice on making an indoor kitchem oven

[PizzaJoy]

Hi!
My name is joy. I love this site! I really want my "new" aka, not yet even started still bare studs, kitchen. My boyfriend and I just purchased a house and it was without a kitchen, well it had the room that would be a kitchen... HA HA. We have a "back porch" which is actually just a 4x4(generous estimation) little hut looking thing. The architecture of our home is Spanish revival, just so you can try to picture it, I'll be posting photos soon. Anyway, there is a door that leads from our kitchen out to this little "porch". We want to eliminate that door and use the existing enclosure to try and build our oven in, partially outdoors, with the oven door being inside our kitchen. We were actually hoping we could do a mult. opening oven so we could cook indoors or out with the same oven two doors...however, it seems many of you argee that mult. opening ovens are not that efficient and I even don’t know if what we want to do is possible! Have any of you tried to do indoor ovens??? I was reading through the postings and it seems most are outdoors... I have the plans for the pompeii oven and its sounds perfect! I know we would use it at minimum 4 days a week!!! I really like that design because of the quick heat up time! I can fire it up when I get home while I getting everything ready and chopping veggies and shredding cheese OH IM SOO EXCITED!!!!! I would really appreciate some advice!!!!!! I CAN'T WAIT to get started!!!!!

[thebadger]

Joy,

The answer is Yes, but you'll have a lot more things to consider:

You'll definitely need a permit (can't imagine that you wouldn't)
Safely venting to the outside
Structural issues - these bad boys are HEAVY.

I would do some more searching as I there are threads that discuss...

Good luck.

Dick

[gjbingham]

Everyone wants an indoor oven, I don't know of any. I get forgetful these days with my egg timers disease (ala Jeff). Cool idea!

[Xabia Jim]

PJ

do you have the room to take out your pizza on the peel? (pretend your oven opening is 4 feet from the back wall/corner and use a broom handle)

a generous 4x4 does not sound like much space to work inside??

I think a lot of ovens are built after the house (and many other projects) are done so they get put outside. Easier, safer, no smoking, less hassels I think.

Good luck either way!
XJ

[RTflorida]

I agree with XJ, most ovens are built long after the home. Many code, safety, and structural issues come into play when adding to your home. Simply put, usually much more costly than most people have to spend, when trying to adapt to fit their existing home...so the oven ends up on the patio or in the back yard.
New home construction or a MAJOR renovation are a different story, simply have everything properly engineered, approved, and budgeted before work begins...fewer surprises and less cost overruns, not to mention safer and more structurally sound.

RT

[dmun]

Just as a side note: I have a 36" oven, and my enclosure is five by five feet, which was tight, especially in the front. I had to rest my vent structure partly on the dome to pull that off.

[cvdukes]

Hate to damper the enthusiam for an indoor oven, but....

Last pizza party we had here, there was a couple that we had to give instructions to on how to pull out the dough, cook the pizzas, etc. Clearly novices when it came to a WFO...

Now we'ver been over to their house before, and there is huge masonry unit sitting between the living room and the kitchen. I remember that it has a fireplace opening in the living room, but other friends maintain that Terry has a pizza oven opening on the other side into the kithen, so questioned them about it.
Turns out it does have an oven like everyone said. Terry said it (the entire masonry unit) was built at the cost of several thousand dollars. They had a few people over a few time swhen they first built it eight years ago, but that the oven just heated up the house too much and they haven't USED IT SINCE!...
From what I remember of it,and from Terry said, this oven was built to very high standards with all the proper chimneys.
Guess the moral is, something inside the house operating around 1000 degrees is just going to throw out a lot of heat no matter how well its designed or built. If you go the indoor route, really think hard about super good insulating doors and etc.

[gjbingham]

CVDukes,
Perhaps a hood that vents the heat outside would be a good option, Something above the oven's opening. Heat rises Iin gasses). A vent/hood may minimize the problem.

[cvdukes]

George,
I agree a hood would improve the situation, but you also get a lot of radiant heat out the oven opening onto other surfaces. As I recall from the original post, seems like there was a fairly small area to put an oven (5X5?). To counteract the heat gain, there would need to be some major amounts of air vented out. So yeah, an indoor oven sounds great but unless you're living in the artic regions, better be prepared to have the fans running at a sound level approaching that of an airplane.

[gjbingham]

CV,
You might be right. I stand in front of my oven and I hardly notice the heat from the opening. I put my hands inside to put on a log, and I scream bloody murder. I've no doubt that there is heat radiating and flowing out the oven door. If it was inside, it would definitely add heat to a room, though how much, I cannot guess.

There's plenty of indoor ovens, wood fired and gas fired. It's just a matter of managing the excess heat and getting rid of it, at least during the summer.