POLL........How many Fire Bricks did you use for your oven?????

[100million]

I Would LIKE to know..... How many bricks people Bought or used for there oven and what size their oven is and if they cut them in a wedge (Cut them) or used half pieces (which means you have to uses more mortar)....

This will help FB in knowing how many bricks they should include with there kits....I feel there total is a little short.

CAN you Please Pin this to the top of the thread so it does not get buried? This way people will comment and others will use this info. If you feel it needs to be in the Newbie Forum, Tools, Tips and Techniques ,Getting Started or Pompeii Oven Construction.....Feel free to move it.


Well I will Start:::::

I use 149 brick for my floor, dome, enclosure. I Cut in half and then wedges, and I did not screw up more then 5 bricks that I had to throw away and never use.

My Oven was 29"

[eprante]

I bought 280, I ended up using 260, I cut 20 bricks into 1/3's at about the 7th course but they ended up not working as well as the 1/2 bricks I was using, so they ended up getting wasted except for a few in the last rings. My oven is a 42" diameter Pompeii. Other than the 20 I cut into thirds, I wasted very few( though some may look at my brick laying and say that I should have wasted more of them).
Eric

[Dino_Pizza]

My 42" oven:
275 bricks (then I bought about 10 more, 2 left over, unused)
Tapered: YES (a bit sloppy but still tapered-sides and bottom to save mortar)

NOTES: I probably wasted about 10 bricks due to bad cuts that couldn't be used in other places or change in the vent transition and 1" reveal cut into the top arch bricks and side walls. If the reveal wasn't cut right, I had to throw out the bricks in these complex cuts.

[kebwi]

[Ouch, that's a lot of their/there discrepancies in one post. ]

Lesse, I bought 250 bricks and built a 36" oven. I cut my bricks very tightly on multiple axes. I would say I have -- hmmm, this is an estimate -- 30 or 40 left over plus 5-10 worth of scraps and 5-10 worth of accumulated residue/dust from the tile saw).

Cheers!

[nissanneill]

My 40"Pompeii used 140 bricks for the dome and hearth. The first vertical soldier course were full bricks, all other courses were half bricks. The front arch and chimney void were paving wedge bricks and clay house bricks.

Neill

[SCChris]

I was about 280 on my 43"

Chris

[Raffy]

I have a 39-inch (1 meter) oven. I bought 200 firebricks and used all but 1, seriously! I'll keep it as a momento. No wasted brick I can remember. In fact, I used most of the scraps for strange cuts and shapes that were needed for the dome-arch connections. Only waste I have is the cut offs from tapered bricks. I'm gonna pound them into sand for fireclay Reduce, Reuse, Recycle for the next oven build hahaha

Full soldier course, half bricks for 1st to 8th course, tapered every other brick for succeeding courses til keystone. The keystone was actually made from two scraps of brick stuck together.

[glindhout]

My original order was for 250 bricks, and I just picked up another 50 since it looks like I might run short... I'm using tapered bricks (which wastes bricks) but saves on the mortar. I'm using mostly 1/3 bricks after the 8th course...

Greg

[RTflorida]

Bought 215, used 207 for my entire 36" oven (dome, hearth, entry arch)

All brick cut to fit, no halves. I was able to get 2 wedges out of each brick, in some cases 3 (I was a stickler for staggering my joints, so no two bricks are exactly the same size).
No waste, except for small chunks and slivers (and a whole lot of paste from the tile saw).

RT

[gregarious]

I bought the 42inch Pompeii Kit from FB and it included 140 bricks and 20 floor tiles (double sized bricks). This was no where near enough! They were generous in that they actually sent 144 bricks, though the specs indicated 140. In order to build a hemispherical oven with 21 inch radius/42 inch diameter, with soldier course around the floor, according to FB plans- we had to order an additional 40 bricks. I worked with a very good mason and he had almost no waste (there was a small handful of brick pieces -rubble really- at the end, and we used every usable offcut). Even with the additional 40 bricks we needed about 20 more locally sourced standard duty firebricks for the flue take off. So altogether if I had built the floor, dome entry arches/vent landing and flue take-off with firebrick- it would totalled 238 bricks. If I were to do it again- I would insist on 250 brick equivalent at the start, since there is nothing more frustrating than seeing the dome half-built and counting every scrap of brick to see if there will be enough!