New here and pix of my first oven

[flyboybali]

Hello to all. I am posting a few pictures of a pizza oven we made the end of November 2011. It was meant to be an oven for home use when we felt like pizza. It was built by a nephew and the build is very good, accurate to what we wanted and no problems to date. <br>We did rely on many references from the Internet but at times this was confusing so we picked the best path. The oven is a one metre dome. No gap between bricks is more than 0,5 mm and the fireclay was mixed with volcanic black sand – all we could get. The hearth was made key shaped with no heat /expansion gap between the door area and oven itself. This has caused no problems. Under the heart we wanted something called ‘batu apung’, a light weight stone about 1 cm across that the volcanoes blow out. Not sure if that’s pumice but I thought it would be a good insulator. Luck was against in getting this as many locals had used too much of it in light weight cement and it was rarely stocked any more as home built buildings had collapsed due to its use. <br>Nothing classy here in Bali at that time for insulating so we had to use black volcanic sand under the hearth. Hardly an insulator. The sand sat on 20 cm of reinforced concrete. Insulation over the dome is 20 cm of Rockwool. Originally the oven was intended for occasional use but my wife wanted a restaurant, so the oven was put into more regular use, to date it has cooked well over 5 thousand 30 cm pizza and baked many burger rolls and bread. The 20 cm thick base stays at 70C and the upper part of the dome varies between 42 and 45C. Since being built is has only been unfired for 3 days.<br>The oven has done well and we are building a second one, it will be a barrel vault 150 by 180 internally. The base was planned for a dome oven so may be a bit bigger than needed. The base is 3 meter by 3 metre and is overkill with strength as we cleared a lot of stones from the garden to fill it up, some 8 tons, two jobs done at one time. Better insulating bricks are around now so this should be a good oven. <br>

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[nixie]

That's a really nice build. 5000 pizzas! impressive.

[albacore]

Yes indeed - your story makes me want to come and try one of your wife's pizzas!
Hopefully the volcano doesn't decide to erupt too often!
Can you get mozarella in Bali?

[flyboybali]

Yes mozzarella is now easy to get, a 10 kg block is about GBP 40 sounds cheap but the selling price of the pizza has be cheap. The most we charge is GBP 4 for a 30 cm pizza. That's the only size we make.

Something I forgot to mention is drying out of the cement when construction was completed. A 3/4 inch plastic water pipe was left in the outer cover which had been made of gypsum and cement, chicken wire etc. This allowed the water to get out as steam. I noted water creeping out from under the dome sides for about ten days of firing. When all appeared to be dry the pipe was removed and the hole closed off.

We do not use a thermometer to check temperature any more. When the soot burns off and the firebricks are clean the temperature is right. The highest temperature we have measured is 700C but the pizza flash cooked in about half a minute. Excellent taste but needed quick reflexes to stop it being charcoal. Fire bricks are the 1700C type but the dome was closed off with a circle of castable fire cement is limited to 1450C.

[cobblerdave]

G'day
What do you fuel your oven with?
I live in sub tropical Aust QLD but along with these fellows I suffer from wood that is "less than dry"
Regards Dave

[flyboybali]

Hi Dave.
The first answer would be any wood around for the heat up which starts at midday. But when we are staying at heat for pizza we use mango wood when we can. Most of the wood we get is a tree used for feeding its leaves to cows, when the tree gets too tall in a few years its hacked down and used for fires. Smells a bit when burning but we do OK with it. Oddly enough a good wood has been frangipani when it’s really dry. It makes little smoke, not much flame but a good hot charcoal fire. Ref the wood less than dry: we keep a few truck loads under shelter. In the past when we need to dry wood we stack it in the oven full as much as we can. This is done in the morning with the oven still at 200C. Done at night it would catch fire.

[flyboybali]

Dave I forgot to mention that the frangipani wood is from old trees that I had to trim back. Its about 100 kg per piece and took years to dry. The small bits are no use. When we use ordinary wood its in 1/2 kilo bits. When we need quick heat we add a few dry coconut shells. They burn like they've got gas stored in them.

[cobblerdave]

G