Designing a Custom Wood Pizza Oven

Will Mcdonald on 12/08/2018 - 20:50

Designing a custom wood Fire Pizza Oven. In need of some feedback on the design.
This is what i have done so far
- I have dismantled the original brick bbq with chimney
- Have made a slab of cement and sand with a wire mesh through it (50 mm thick)

So the next steps is pre purchasing a bunnings Chapala BBQ Pizza Oven, this one below
https://www.bunnings.com.au/chapala-large-bbq-pizza-oven_p31…
And than adding
- Perlite and cement composition for insulation around the oven and firepit
- Door for Firepit area

The purpose of my design is to have the fire from the wood burning below the actually oven and than the heat filters up through the back of the Chapala pizza oven and cooks the pizza. There will be insulation on the inside of the firepit and on top of the Chapala oven. Essentially the whole oven design will allow easy use and cleaning of the pizza oven.

So the question i have is will my design and work if it doesn't work what can i change to get it to work?
Images are for reference to understand the design better

https://ibb.co/c5SQWU
https://ibb.co/b7eB5p
https://ibb.co/b98okp
https://ibb.co/j5aZQp
https://ibb.co/i5BkWU

Home & Garden

Comments

  • Quantumcat on 12/08/2018 - 21:08
    +2

    You'll end up with burnt on the bottom and raw on top. The fire has to be burned in the oven itself for long enough so all the concrete/stone heats up including the top, then the remaining coals are pushed to the back and the pizza is cooked in the uniformly hot oven, with heat coming from the concrete/bricks/stone above as well as below. It isn't actually the actively burning fire that cooks, but the heat built up in the stone that radiates out over the next couple of hours, with the temperature slowly dropping (it is great to cook bread in the oven after it isn't hot enough for pizza anymore).
    Could work for a smoker though, maybe.

    • mskeggs on 12/08/2018 - 21:25
      +1

      I agree with Quantumcat, you want to have the fire in the oven to heat up the whole thing, then push the coals to the back when you are ready to cook.
      I have been told that having the burning coals in the fire box also dries out the air to help crisp up the crust too.
      The design you are contemplating is ok for a normal oven, but you won't get the awesome results a pizza oven brings.

      • Quantumcat on 12/08/2018 - 21:55

        Yeah I would guess the results would be a lot like using an electric fan-forced oven, and higher fuel use than a normal wood-fired pizza oven.

    • Will Mcdonald on 12/08/2018 - 21:41

      So your saying that even if i left the fire burning for an hour or so the heat wouldn't effectively transfer to the clay pizza oven above?

      • Quantumcat on 12/08/2018 - 21:52

        I don't think so, the slab on top would be blocking radiative heat, so the oven would only be heating from the smoke and rising air travelling through. If it did manage to heat through, you'd be using way, way more fuel to achieve the same outcome. I haven't done any physics calculations or anything, just my feeling.

  • serpserpserp on 12/08/2018 - 21:48
    +1

    I was gonna question this but you know, I don't know anyone that has tried it before so just do it and tell us your results!

    Not sure how this new design makes things easier to clean. You are just swapping one space to clean for two spaces to clean. But you know, details!

    • Will Mcdonald on 12/08/2018 - 22:38

      pretty much put the wood to burn in the below firepit and get it up to temp, than add the pizza to the top oven and once i'm done. I only empty the ash from the bottom. No excessive cleaning necessary

  • thatonethere on 12/08/2018 - 22:07

    Here is a similar design https://www.nectre.com/nectre-pizza-oven

    As other people have pointed out this isnt how pizza is cooked traditionally but good luck.

    • Will Mcdonald on 12/08/2018 - 22:34

      thanks, i'll see what i need to do now to fix the problem

  • Godric on 12/08/2018 - 22:17
    +1

    i can beta test the pizzas if you need

  • Will Mcdonald on 12/08/2018 - 23:04

    Ok got a mate who said he could help me out by doing a thermodynamic simulation model for it. It may take a couple of days to complete.

  • bigticket on 13/08/2018 - 00:41
    +1

    That's definitely not going to work.

    There is not enough heat transfer through your concrete slab to heat the bunnings pizza oven. Heat will need to flow through your slab then the bunnings pizza oven base and then heat the dome. Good luck with that.

    When not in use for some time, pizza ovens a notorious for moisture build up in the oven walls. It can take several hours to just expel moisture with conventional direct heat.

  • matt3 on 13/08/2018 - 06:22
    +1

    The coals have to be in the oven itself. After you've made about 5-7 pizzas, the floor of the oven where you place the pizzas has a cool spot where the pizzas have drawn heat out of the firebricks. You have to rake the coals over this cool spot to bring it back up to temperature (5-10 mins: enough time to refill your drink). Push the coals to the back and off you go again.

  • weeeen on 13/08/2018 - 09:52

    We built one with only the dome part first, but it cooled down too quick, so next time we built one with both a fire box underneath and the dome, thus when cooking building two fires, we found this was the best outcome - has the capacity to cook large volume of pizzas over long periods of time.

    • Quantumcat on 13/08/2018 - 10:14

      If it cooled down too quickly you didn't have enough mass in the dome or you didn't burn the fire long enough before cooking.

  • windale on 14/08/2018 - 04:24

    I think your concrete slab will crack with the heat.

    • Will Mcdonald on 14/08/2018 - 12:28

      slab is made of sand and cement with a wire mesh through it. Not concrete

      • windale on 14/08/2018 - 15:27

        Contrary to popular belief, concrete and cement are not the same thing; cement is actually just a component of concrete. Concrete is made up of three basic components: water, aggregate (rock, sand, or gravel) and Portland cement. Cement, usually in powder form, acts as a binding agent when mixed with water and aggregates. This combination, or concrete mix, will be poured and harden into the durable material with which we are all familiar.

        https://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete.html

  • Will Mcdonald on 10/03/2019 - 10:29

    ***Update Pizza Oven is complete
    Using a combination of wood and charcoal i'm able to cook pizza, breads and even a roast chicken. I'm happy with the results but took me a long time to work stuff out and how to fix any problems that occurred. Here are the images of the completed result.
    https://imgur.com/a/X0XU8u7
    https://ibb.co/tsMVFqP
    https://ibb.co/YtL3Ymj
    https://ibb.co/CVGWjCd
    https://ibb.co/pJgk4Rt

    • The whole fire pit area below the oven is insulated on 3 sides (left, right and back).
    • The fire pit area is enclosed with vermiculite bricks
    • There is a 20cm x 15cm whole in the rear of the pizza oven that connects the fire pit to the pizza oven.
    • I have also drilled about 30 holes in the middle of the slab connecting between the fire pit to the pizza oven, so the pizza oven base is heated.
    • The clay oven is covered in a vermiculite and cement mix 5:1
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