Planning My Brick Built Dome Oven

[benb]

Hi all,

Just asking for some advice around quantities to order for my Dome pizza oven. I have read many of the posts already on the forum but couldn’t find one that gave an idea for amount of materials needed. My oven will be approximately 100cm wide from outer wall to outer wall. I plan to build the oven out of fire bricks. That’s both the floor and the dome it self. I am hoping to use glass under the oven to insulate the floor and will use blanket to insulate the dome. Would you guys plaster the brick work outside the dome with vermiculite render before blanketing? Then once blanketed will then plaster outside with vermiculite render again I guess. Will then finish externally with mosaics tiles.
I was hoping that someone on here might be able to give me a rough idea of what I will need in terms of firebricks for dome and floor, an Approx amount of fire clay and refractory cement I will need for home brew for this oven, an Approx amount of vermiculite I will need for oven and Approx amount of insulating blanket. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

BenB

[downunderdave]

Aug 11, 2022 16:11:36 GMT benb said:

Hi all,

Just asking for some advice around quantities to order for my Dome pizza oven. I have read many of the posts already on the forum but couldn’t find one that gave an idea for amount of materials needed. My oven will be approximately 100cm wide from outer wall to outer wall. I plan to build the oven out of fire bricks. That’s both the floor and the dome it self. I am hoping to use glass under the oven to insulate the floor and will use blanket to insulate the dome. Would you guys plaster the brick work outside the dome with vermiculite render before blanketing? Then once blanketed will then plaster outside with vermiculite render again I guess. Will then finish externally with mosaics tiles.
I was hoping that someone on here might be able to give me a rough idea of what I will need in terms of firebricks for dome and floor, an Approx amount of fire clay and refractory cement I will need for home brew for this oven, an Approx amount of vermiculite I will need for oven and Approx amount of insulating blanket. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

BenB

Broken glass as an underfloor insulator is not a particularly good insulating material. It’s advantage is that it’s free if you don’t count the cost of the booze you bought and drank to obtain it. A better material to use is calcium silicate board although it is expensive. A cheap alternative is to use a 5:1 vermiculite or perlite and Portland cement mix. The downside is that it takes a long time for the free water in the mix to dry out.

It is better to use the higher quality insulation (blanket) over the dome and then the 10:1 vermicrete over that. This will then give you a more even form than the blanket as well as providing a firmer substrate than the blanket, against which you can render. Work out the thickness of all these layers first, because you don’t want to run out of room on your relatively small 100cm wide slab. Also remember that you’ll need extra room at the front for a flue gallery and decorative arch. Work out the volumes required for a hemisphere using the V= 1/2 X 4/3 X pi x r3

If using the homebrew mortar do not use refractory (calcium aluminate) cement as its already fast reaction is accelerated in the presence of lime. It will be going off as soon as you’ve mixed it. Only use normal Portland cement.

I’d say one 20kg bag of clay and one 20kg bag of hydrated lime should be plenty. Wear rubber gloves, the lime is more vicious than cement.