Brick Oven in Conservatory: Part Three

The base of a brick oven can be seen in two ways.

Arch form and finished top slab

Firstly, it is a lot of concrete product, basic in its structure.
But it is also where the first opportunity for enhancement appears.

arch bricks laid dry on arch form

The brick oven I am building for my home (especially as the midwinter is when I have time for personal projects) is intended to take advantage of every design opportunity.

Concrete will encase arch

This oven has a brick lined woodbox with a barrel arch.  The walls of the woodbox were bricked before the arch went on.  The arch form is one I have used on large oven faces.  I have found that laying brick on the outside of the arch form and then pouring the concrete oven base slab on top cements the bricks in place and creates a strong structure.

The form will remain under the slab until the woodbox face arch is bricked in the next phase.

rebar in place before slab is finished

Under Cover Brick Ovens

Stone building by TBO for the 54" oven at Pietree Orchard

Living in New England, I am a proponent of under-cover brick ovens.   The picture we have in our minds of brick ovens is often generated by images from California, where you can live if you have the "dough, ray, me".

Pietree's TBO 54

On the other hand, I find life here in Maine quite sane and sanity in our climate calls for a roof, at least, and some walls, in winter.
The value of a shelter can be estimated by this calculation: ovens I've built under cover get used 30 times more often than ones in backyards.  Just a hint...

clay oven in Costa Rica sheltered from rain

Community oven in Audrix, France

Audrix timber shelter

Family TBO 36 in West Virginia

TBO 48" Restaurant oven in Naples Maine

Bread baker's oven in NH

TBO 36 Private oven in greenhouse

co

Keeping the Brick Oven Hot

insulation inner door

We tend to believe that the fire we build in our brick oven will keep it hot.  In fact, it is the mass of the oven, and especially, the insulation under and around the oven that keeps it hot.

The three places an oven is apt to lose heat is:

1. out the flue
2. through the brick dome
3. under the floor

Preventing this loss is easy and best done as the oven is built.

Foamglas and two layers of fire brick

Fiber blanket before roof goes on

• Heat loss out the flue is slowed by the door, and in the case of an indoor oven, by a damper in the flue.  In some cases, an additional door filled with insulation has been made to prolong baking time.
• As the fire heats the bricks of the dome, the BTU's migrate from the interior surface to the exterior.  If there is little or no insulation there, they keep going, resulting in a rapid decrease in oven temperature.  The heat can be contained by significant insulation.  I use refractory insulation concrete as a first layer over the dome and follow-up with four inches of ceramic fiber insulation.  In ovens with a rectangular enclosure, I sometimes fill the remaining space with vermiculite.
• Heat will migrate downward through the floor of the oven.  I use 4" of a product called, 'Foamglas'.  It is a rigid expanded high temp glass product and makes the setting of floor bricks easy.

insulating concrete with my handprint signature

Fiber blanket, flue and make-up air ducts

Fill'r up

Brick Oven History

One of 20+ brick ovens in Pompeii, Italy

Historical brick ovens are reference points.  Since the brick oven is very old, and clay ovens even older, taking a close look at ovens built and still standing after hundreds, even thousands of years,  is instructive.

print from the middle ages

paper and a stone to test temp

Costa Rican oven with two mouths

Brick oven in foreground at Annaberg on St. John  USVI

St. John oven

Brick Oven Visits

If you are reading this, you are among an average of 350 people visiting this blog each day.  This pleases me as the purpose of my writing is to provide information about brick ovens.  I have always hoped that it would begin a conversation or correspondence among brick oven fans.

It has.  I've heard, via email or phone, from people in 30 states and five countries.

So, as this blog exceeds 165,000 visits, I hope that you the reader might leave a comment, both guilt free and without the danger of my bothering you in the future without your request.

Sure, I'm in business to build these ovens, but I also support others building them.  I'm interested in your thoughts and questions; they improve my work.

Best wishes to you all as the year winds down,
David Neufeld
TBO

The Angel in the Details

An eye on the overall project is essential to brick oven building.  However, the details are what allow a custom brick oven to integrate into the owner's life.  Details, sometimes lightly defined at the start of the project, come into focus as the exterior is in process.  I have made a commitment, written into my contracts, to pay attention to aesthetic opportunities as they arrive.  It reads, "if TBO sees aesthetic improvements that do not significantly increase the labor or cost of the project, they will, upon approval of the owner, be done without additional cost."
The results have been remarkable and as individual as my customers.

Ocean-rounded stone on as the keystone on a TBO 36" in CA

An elongated dome in Missouri

Art-Deco stonework in a loft

Iron Coat and hat hooks used as door handles

Custom Ash drawer for TBO Greenhouse oven 2016

The community oven in Audrix France that inspired some designs of mine

An Irish Limestone keystone for an Irish customer

Decorative bricks and custom cut granite spacers on a TBO bakery oven face arch

True Brick Oven Pizza

TBO 54" at Brewster Academy

I didn't set out to build pizza ovens.  My first thought was in the direction of bread baking.

However, these ovens are referred to as pizzas ovens, mostly due to the many pizza joints that employ them.  Even in Italy, you would most often see pizza coming out of these ovens (great pizza!)

So, with a nod to modernity and to the hundreds of pizzas that have come out of my oven and the dozens of ovens I've built, I honor the pizza oven...

Eataly Boston

TBO 36" in Winchester NH

Portable TBO 48"

TBO 36