Rear and front walls, sloping or verticle

[colonelorbit]

Hi, am about to start my own wood fired oven, have sourced some recycled bricks (old clay type from chimney of demolished building) and oak framing to make the base and decided on the barrel style for strength and ease of building.

Have been doing a great deal of research, as you do!, and am nearly ready to start my build, however I just wandered what people thought about the benefits or not of building a barrel oven with sloping rear and front walls.

I thought this might improve the internal reflective capability of the oven and therefore reduce heating times and improve the evenness of the heat spread though the oven space (from a laymen's point of view anyway!). The disadvantage is that it would be a bit harder to build.

Question: Has anyone had any experience of an oven with sloping rear/front wall - building or using or does anyone have any thoughts regarding the perceived benefits/disadvantages.

Any comments gratefully accepted, as I've struggled to find much reference to this. Ta Col

[turkey]

welcome aboard colonelorbit ,

with regards to the sloping ends I assume you mean rounded so rather than a barrel it is shaped like a drug capsule?

www.thefoodinmybeard.com/2008/10/pizzaweekday4brickoven.html

has a small barrel vault oven with a rounded end, its a bit rough and ready but is that what you had in mind?

it may reflect or rather radiate heat better but then you are nearly building a Pompeii which is designed to do that also... Having done the brick part of my Pompeii I am not sure its that much harder than a barrel vault, indeed the part that took the most time for me where the arches, as the dome rings just flow up slowly and are self supporting. It does require a different footprint tho.

[cannyfradock]

Hello Colenelorbit......welcome to the forum

I've never come across a Barrel/Vault oven build with sloping side/front walls......The link from Turkey is the first time I have seen this. Every home build I see is different, but I am still in the opinion of a barrel/vault oven will give a rectangle hearth......perfect for batches of bread (but, can of coarse cook pizza).....and a Pompeii oven .....circular hearth, perfect for pizza baking (but, can of coarse bake bread).....a combining of the two seems like a lot of extra work....but that's only my opinion...

Looking forward to see which direction you take.....whichever you decide...will be the correct one.

Terry

[turkey]

there is one similar oven I can think of but is more an elongated Pompeii and that is a squirrel tail, its more a tear drop with a order thin part, also often has a flue that goes back over the roof for heat transfer.

historically there might be mire but feel these are all curved so not really barrel vault

www.anton-groell.de/english/vault.html

no reason you can't do it tho, could make a very interesting final design which looks great internally, Do you have dimensions in mind?

[DuncanM]

Hi Col,

I have a BVO oven and I don't believe it's necessary to have a sloping back wall the reason for this is air flow.

Cold air gets sucked into the oven from the bottom and the exhaust is at the top, this circulates in the oven meaning the flames naturally lick across the roof from the back of the oven towards the front of it even with a straight wall. I can't see the added effort to make the sloped rear wall will be of any benefit.

A gradual entrance to the oven will aid the exhaust exiting the oven though, the is:

====
======
=======
======= <-- Entrance

If that makes sense.

Good luck with your build.

[tonyb]

My gut feeling is that curved ends won't make any noticeable improvement (how will you know ) but neither will it make it worse! It will take more materials and be a bit more complicated to build but when its done you will have something a little different to show off.

[scottme]

Nothing I've seen suggests there would be any advantage to having sloping or curved ends on a barrel vault oven. I don't think the internal shape makes much difference in any case; the choice between barrel vault and pompeii has always seemed like a mainly aesthetic one to me.

As long as you get the correct ratio of internal height to entrance height you will get a decent circulation of hot gases and more or less efficient combustion of your fuel, and the interior of the oven heats up as a result of all three modes of heat transfer: conduction, radiation and convection.

Once the oven has reached working temperature, the food you cook in it gets heated mainly by conduction from contact with the floor and otherwise by radiation, which given the relatively short distances involved, won't be significantly influenced by the shape of the oven interior.

But feel free to build your oven with sloping walls: I'm sure we'd all be intrigued to see it!