Do you need more mass (beyond the brick) in the dome

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hi stanley/dianne ...

i don't have my insulation on yet but ...

i have a pompeii oven with*a 2.5 inch firebrick floor on top of 2 inches of concrete on top of a slab with 2.5 inches of vermiculite/cement. i have almost no mortar on the exterior of the dome giving me effectively a dome thickness of 4.7 inches.

our*first two attempts at pizza produced*pizzas which were good but didn't have the crispy crust i was looking for.**(however, some garlic we roasted was perfect). two weekends ago on the third try*i left the kids alone with the fire and told them to throw some wood on the fire if it looked like it needed it. being kids, they then proceeded to load up the oven with a forest's worth of wood. after the inferno went down, we cooked our pizza and*they were*perfect !! the oven was still warm (maybe 90 degrees F)*12 hours later.*

as james has noted, you can't get the oven too hot for pizza. i don't have much to base my opinion on but i think that roasting meats is going to be fine in my oven as long as i do it "on the way down" and with no door so as to allow me to regulate the heat with a little wood every now and then. it seems that by controlling the amount of fire*i will be able to*get the oven where i want it with consistant results (but only time will tell).*

pictures of my oven are at*<http://www.cpsusa.com/ebay/pompeiioven.htm>www.cpsusa.com/ebay/pompeiioven.htm *

Robert

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i have a 2.25 inch floor;
i plan to put on about 4*inches of insulation (even with the kids' science experiment [can nuclear fusion be achieved with wood?]) the outside of the dome wasn't blazing hot.

Robert