Picton Pizzaria is back

[ihughes]

Hi everyone,
I've been offline in recent months and fell out of touch but I'm back again with an almost finished and fully working oven. My wife got a bit tired of my work commitments and lack of free time and bought a modular oven from Vesuvio. It's from Italy and looks a lot like the modular ovens in the Forno Bravo shop.

I had an interesting chat with a refractory supplier who said they were now advising people to use 3 layers of thermal blanket and then a coat of render rather than 2 layers of blanket, layer of vermiculite cement and then render.

I stuck with manufacturer's recommendations and used the second method but it made me wonder if there was any trade-off with thermal mass as opposed to just using the insulation.

I also used two panels of Hebel concrete (1200x600x100) to sit the dome on and then put vermiculite-refractory cement around it to square it off with the concrete base.

It's worked a treat and I haven't had any problems getting the oven quickly up to heat and retaining it. And you can put your hand on the outside of the dome and can't feel any temperature change.

I have had problems with cracks around the chimney which have been worsened by some really strong winds that pushed the chimney and forced some of the cracks to chip off ( see picture). Before I finish the outside with tiles does anyone have any recommendations about what I should do about them or should I just ignore them?

Cheers

Ian

[dmun]

Is that plain metal stovepipe? you may be looking at thermal expansion problems.

[ihughes]

Stainless steel according to the supplier. The cracks were there before the wind but just cosmetic so I'm thinking external forces rather than heat. I've been surprised by the lack of heat on the external walls despite internal readings over 1000F.

Despite the appearance should I think about guide wires to hold the chimney in place or just shorten it and trust the draw will be enough to take up the smoke?