Christo's Cucina

[christo]

Getting closer

Here is my vision for my outdoor kitchen.

Please let me know what you think and give me any guidance and input on how to improve my pizza making before I commit to this design.

Thanks!!!

Christo

[redbricknick]

Looks good Christo. Are you putting storage under the countertop wings? I think the little digital guy in the foreground needs a girl. He looks sad.

[dmun]

That hole on the right hand counter - is that an opening for a tandoori oven?

Your design looks nice, I like the corner oven placement, and the matched arches.

[christo]

Thanks - the guy in the drawing is a little sad - He does not have a pizza oven.....

I should be a little more specific about my concerns. If you like you can message me off the list as well.

I'm using a pentagon shape of the oven to try to reduce the overall impact and to fool the eye on the overall size/mass of the oven. I will make the oven opening the same height as my tennis swing/peel swing – which to me seems to be about 44 inches. The shape of the oven tends to reduce the space on either side of the opening - I thought that was a good thing but now have concerns that I may be making it too tight. This is where I need advice from oven users......

The right side:

The holes on the side are a charcoal grill - placed conveniently to dump coals from the oven to the grill. The smaller hole is a sink that will be serviced by a greywater drain/gravel sump. I'm on the fence about adding a fridge. Is a refrigerator a 30 feet from the house useful? Maybe swap the grill for a fridge? Area to right of sink is intended for dough prep prior to company adding toppings at left counter. Counter top height is right now the same as oven opening height that will have to be changed. A sink/grill at 44 inches wont work. I could compromise on oven height to lower the countertops as well. Looks like another trip to the drawing board.

The left side:

This is a pizza prep/counter/bar area – Also same height as the oven opening - people can stand or sit to make/eat pizzas. The set back under the top is for knees/stools. - I'll make my own 3 legged stools – I can adjust height to conform to the height in terms of seating. Countertop/bar area same height as oven opening – any concerns here?

One of James’s ovens is used as an inspiration for the oven enclosure - I will have some lighting in the niches on either side of the oven, as well as either side at the countertops – this lighting is not yet determined.

Material choices – Concrete/Terrazzo for the countertops/oven transistion – I intend to epoxy LED’s to marbles and place them in the concrete forms prior to the pour. The marbles will act as diffusers for the LED’s – my experiments so far make me think this will be really fun. Stucco is the planned material to finish the rest.

I finished mounting a Web cam to the back of my house and hope to fire it up soon – I wrote a program to take daily pics and hope to turn them into a time lapse movie of construction.

The drawing was done with Google Sketchup - just downloaded it - very easy to make 3d drawings at scale.... and sad guy comes with it for free!!! (actually the whole thing is free for personal use)

Thanks

Christo

[christo]

This has become an officially sanctioned project of the SEPOBA (South Eastern Pizza Oven Builders Association).

I'm very disapointed in my time lapse camera - resolution is very poor. Gonna have to find another.

The Pics below should look a little bit familiar..... They are my first sets of triangles for the oven!!!

Don't get too scared. I will not make this a Dmun rerun - I will be focusing only on apparent differences in assy technique based on his suggestions and my ideas.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself as I'm cutting the oven dome pieces before the foundation is poured. More to follow!!!!

[carioca]

Originally Posted by christo

<SNIP>

I'm on the fence about adding a fridge. Is a refrigerator a 30 feet from the house useful? Maybe swap the grill for a fridge?

Christo

Hey Christo, have you thought of a 12 V DC fridge/freezer thing? I bought a Waeco set of compressor/evaporator units about a year ago to either use in my VW Transporter with a 300 L insulated chest-type box or as supplementary cooling for my wine cellar. Haven't made up my mind yet (there's an oven to finish first). But you could run it off a 70 A/h type battery and a solar panel with regulator to keep the battery charged...

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Carioca

[christo]

Well..... It's been a crazy couple of days....

Cut down a few trees.... Tied one off to another just incase it went towards the house. Which it did. Sure glad I tied it off. Landed about 3 feet from the garage. Cut it up quickly before my better half saw what I did.

So......I hired out the rest of the 11 trees and the stump grinding.

The site for the future patio, future kitchen, and future pizza oven is now secured!!!

I sold one of my project cars to finance the tree removal. Boy is my wife happy!!!

This is a big project and I decided to build the oven first so I can enjoy it along the way and use it as a bribe to get help to finish the rest of it!!!

I hope I enjoy the oven as much as I've enjoyed the planning and prep so far!!!

Christo

[christo]

Did not take Daves advice to build the geo dome triangle by triangle. Well, that's not totally true. I left the two partial hexagons over the door and the top pentagon unassembled and hoped that would be enough to fudge during assembly.

I decided to assemble the hexagons and pentagons upside down so I could ensure they were flat and consistently shaped. I made a jig to assemble each pentagon or hexagon roughly 1/16 of an inch smaller on all sides to attempt to have a chance at an 1/8 inch joint line.

The hex and pent jigs were constructed with drafting tools and I had to search the internet as I forgot how to construct a pentagon by hand. I made the center dowel supports by trial and error. I buttered each triangle and assembled and then tapped them to hit the line I drew on the boards. It is amazing how well they looked when I flipped them over.

I did one pair of hexes and pents per day as one thing I found about the refrax - it did not seem to have the initial bonding strength that heat stop does. But wait 3 or 4 days and it becomes literally hard as a rock. The other nice thing - is that when I flipped them over the next day I could still wash off any extra mortar. I saved the rest of my refrax to assemble my oven arch.... I want that sucker to be tough!!! My oven will have the dark mortar lines of the refrax holding the small pieces together and the lighter morar lines of heat stop holding the hexes and pents together.

First or second of many mistakes: As I did not think about compensating for the mortar joints inbetween the hexes and pentagons when initially cutting them I had to go back to desert domes and calcuate the dome size based on the triangles I had cut. Turns out to be just about 1 meter. Whoda thought......

I drew the circle on a piece of cardboard and mocked up the intial ring as it was going to be the most important part of my journey.

Things look like they will fit.

[wlively]

Chris

Nice looking pentagons, it looks like your dome will be a sight to see.

And I thought my wedge dome was becoming labor intensive. Let's just say it's a good thing I am better building airplanes than masonry.

[dmun]

It's interesting how much darker the refrax is from the heat-stop. I think the contrast is nice. Looking good!

You may find, once you start to assemble that the bottom ring isn't exactly flat.