Two Idiots, One Pizza Oven

[pizzamateur]

Hey Guys, 

this is a bit of a retrospective post, as the oven that I built over this summer is now complete, and I just wanted to payback to this wonderful forum that I basically took all my advice from, the experiences that I had, the trials and tribulations, and most importantly the fact that two absolutely rank amateurs who had never laid a brick before in their lives can build what is now a pretty ruddy effective pizza oven.

[pizzamateur]

So back in April I decided to build a pizza oven, note "pizza" being the term, and not generic WFO. I'm half italian and grew up in a house on the amalfi with a WFO inside it, and have dreamed of having one in sunny old England for ever.



After much debate I decided on a modular, as time was a vague issue, and after endlessly scrolling through this site decided upon WOODFIRE-GOURMET prefab modular oven. 

Deciding factor had absolutely bugger all to do with price, and was totally down to design and shape. I also visited all my favourite pizza joints back in Naples and did some research into the metrics of a WFO that suits the cooking of pizza. Specifically I wanted a low dome height to width, the ability to put a door inside chimney access point, so as to be able to completely seal the dome, a chimney not in the dome, for uninterrupted air circulation, and something not monstrously big. I'm very much of the opinion that if you can crank an oven up to 600C, then a pizza will only take 60 secs, and so the need to do two at a time is pretty redundant.

Here's a photo of the oven back in a restaurant on the island of Capri called Il Grottelle that I really wanted to replicate

[pizzamateur]

As I have never built anything more than den from cushions before in my life I spent not time planning finer details, basically guessed everything I needed from examples on this forum, and then started building using gaffer tape that I had laid on a concrete pad that already existed unevenly in my garden. What I really want to show here is the opposite thread from those that have utilised CAD and know how to mix mortar. 

To give you an idea of how unorganised I am I actually have no photo of the site before the build started. So the first photo of the build here is after day one of base build. Some hard lessons learned here. 

1) mixing mortar with a gardening spade and nothing else is properly hard. However laying mortar on bricks with a trowel is a lot of fun and basically playtime for adults. 

2) Getting a breeze block wall level from a non level base is MUCH harder than I thought. In the back of my mind I didn't need it to be absolute precision as the slab would level it all out eventually.

I decided that a mortar level in between the blocks on the first two levels wasn't necessary as I filled the holes in the breezblocks with steel and loads of concrete to keep everything together. It seemed to work fine. 

As far as dimensions go I wanted it to be pretty massive as a work surface next to the oven is always handy. So I made it big enough to hold the oven widthways.

To all those builders who noticed that I got the maths wrong and thus on one side of the opening have a unconnected 90 degree wall, very well spotted. By the time I noticed it was too late, and once again the theory that the slab and lintel combo that I had in my head should keep everything together seemed to help make the decision not to go back and redo everything!

[pizzamateur]

Here is a photo of idiot no2 mixing the good stuff avec spade. We were in no way sponsored by siemens to do this, having half inched the overalls before the job from a mates boot


And yes the mix was a touch dry there, but wetted a bit later on. 

It's only now that I'm realising quite how italian my attitude to this build was at the time. Hey ho, we didn't make a bad job of florence though did we! (I understand the connotations of what i just said fully and reserve the right to fill my check with tongue during such things)

[pizzamateur]

I wanted a pizza oven much lower than normally advised as I have young kids and I want them to be able to learn and thus provide me with pizzas, as soon as possible. So happily only two breeze block levels before a lintel and brick level. 

Due to my total lack of confidence in my wall building skills, I put in two more lintels than necessary to compensate, and make sure i could put in a pretty chunky slab to give rigidity and more height. I was going for a oven floor height of just above waist height, say a few inches higher than a kitchen work surface.

[pizzamateur]

Here is idiot number 2 looking like he knows what he's doing. Brilliantly flying by the seat of his trowel.

If you want a fun evening, sit down with a bottle of wine or two and a mate and google "how to build a wall" and see where it takes you. By the end of the evening we were planning the extension to his house.

[pizzamateur]

so shuttering was next, I got hold of some pretty wide planks and secured them with screws and also a ratchet strap from a local farmer. For this part we got a cement mixer, but still had to lug the sand from a builders bag about 100 feet in a plastic bathtub thing every time it needed filling. Knackered is the understatement of the century. We started after work at about 6pm and finished in the dark at about 11pm. 

My advice for people laying a concrete slab who have never done it before would be to get EVERYTHING you need on site and as close as possible beforehand.

We laid about 10 inches of concrete and then about 6 inches of vermiculite mix on top, as recommended by the company who I brought the oven off.

[pizzamateur]

I then brought a load of cheap wire netting from a local B&Q and tie wrapped it together on an overlap to fit snuggly on the inside of the shuttering

[pizzamateur]

And then the oven arrived and because I hadn't laid the slab yet it sat on my drive for a few weeks under a tarpaulin.

[pizzamateur]

So down goes the concrete first with some hefty rebar in the middle of it that means it shouldn't go anywhere for quite some time. It took up a bit more space than anticipated so there was only space for about 4 inches of vermiculite on top of it.

[pizzamateur]

And then the vermiculite.

As I said before, the wall was pretty flat, but not by pro standards at all, and the lintels were as close as could be. But what I made sure was the shattering was flat as a pancake, so when the final layer of vermiculite and cement was laid, the spirit level was bob on. 

On top of the wire in the shuttering I put thick plastic sheeting, and some breeze blocks underneath to support the weight of the wire just in case it sagged. I don't know a lot about pressure, but figures it would be spread across the whole wire base so would keep everything fairly flat if we filled the slab evenly.

[pizzamateur]

So i then left the slab for about three weeks whilst going away and working ridiculously hard. (props to the fact that the restaurant I help run just came in the worlds top 50 for the first time (gloat, gloat) meaning that I basically didn't get a moment to beat for the next few weeks).

Worth mentioning that I opened the delivered modular oven at this point and discovered that one of the major sections had been busted in transport. I took some photos and e-mailed them to the company, and they were absolutely fantastic, and replaced the part as quickly as they could with no fuss at all. I really would recommend using these guys if anyone's on the fence. their customer service is excellent.

[lal5000]

Interested to hear the rest.

I am nearly finishing my woodfire gourmet build and I am also very happy with the product and the customer service.

[albacore]

Nice build narrative! I think you were very brave with your shuttering. I would have been afeared of the compo dropping out of the bottom!

Lance

[pizzamateur]

Lance I believe you may be confusing bravery with idiocy, a kindly made mistake