There are many different types of outdoor pizza ovens on the market, however we specialise in helping people to build, or have built for them, a permanent original looking oven, just like those that adorn gardens across the Mediterranean.
There are many different types of outdoor pizza ovens on the market, however we specialise in helping people to build, or have built for them, a permanent original looking oven, just like those that adorn gardens across the Mediterranean.
When I designed the oven I had certain factors in mind, first was “what materials do you use for a pizza oven?” And. “What is the best design to use for a pizza oven?
The ovens have been designed using an age old tradition, the chimney outlet should be between 60% and 70% of the oven roof height. This enables the oven to keep the optimum amount of heat in while still allowing enough air in for the fire to draw.
We base our pizza oven design around the dome shape. This is the most efficient design and easiest to master your outdoor wood burning cooking skills. There are many factors for this, with the main one being their ability to radiate the heat evenly from above, while storing latent heat in the oven floor.
The dome draws the fire up and over the top of the dome, drawing colder air into the fire. The cold air is drawn in and is heated by the same radiant heat that cooks the top of your pizza. As this cycle gets hotter and hotter the secondary gasses ignite in the roof of the oven, known as the vault, it reaches up to 600°C. (one of our customers has had the oven up to 800°C and melted a wine bottle in it, but please, don’t try this at home).
The door opening has been designed using various parameters. It fits in with using refractory or reclaimed bricks which are imperial as well as being wide and tall enough to take a large oven dish with a large meat joint or bird up to the size of a turkey.
But the main reason is that the pizza oven design formula has been around for thousands of years, 63% from roof to opening, or there abouts, 61.8% if you listen to Fibonacci. As you can see from the drawing above, I opted to adhere to this formula, just tweaking the opening by having the venturi at a 45 degrees angle, which works out between 60% and 65%. Not only did the design work fine when I tested it, it works fine a few years on. So why change it? The slightly higher and wider door opening made more sense to the British market.
Purchasing refractory materials can be expensive in themselves, when you add transport and packaging costs to non-bulk order values, they become even more expensive.
We manufacture our ovens out of recycled kiln furniture that is used to support plates and cups in the pottery industry.
All the materials are hand sorted and then ground in a mill to produce fire brick grog. This is mixed with heat proof high alumina cement, perlite and a special super plasticiser that allows the mixture to keep its strength. Without this the mix would simply crumble as the pores in the perlite drain up the fine cement.
We now use ceramic pins in our ovens. These not only add strength, forming a matrix within the refractory mix, they act as elements to store heat in the 100mm thick walls and floor.
Please get in touch with us if you need any more information.