That is a GREAT TIP!

Great tip I luv it

Great tip I actually took an inspiration from this tip and now use in my metal recycling factory to dehumidify the batch before it goes into the furnance / kiln

You are very welcome! No problems!

Ha! I hear you!!

Thanks Ben!!

P

I built my oven, too.

Thanks Damon! If your oven is built from the right refractory materials then it should handle thermal shock just fine - in fact that's precisely what a medium duty firebrick is designed for, coping with severe thermal shock.

No problems!! Thanks for the encouragement!

Thanks Nathan!

You’re welcome 😊

Thank you so much 🙂

Good luck!

It definitely works! What you were seeing there was the end of the probe having flames directly in contact with it - the actual 'oven temperature' would take quite a while to get to 550C (I'm still working on a precise way to quantify the Oven Temperature - is it the air temp in the middle of the oven? Or the temp of the inside face of the brickwork? Or the oven floor temp?? Haha we will figure it out..)

@@TheFireBrickCo my oven I used 2 days before and had some retained heat already… maybe under the floor bricks you could have a horizontal central stainless steel tube with a thermocouple ..

Please do! Also, try kiln-drying your firewood using the residual heat in the oven as it comes down to a point where it won't reignite... fuel moisture of zero coming right up!

@@TheFireBrickCo OK. Used your method and it worked great! Thanks! Still, there's a learning curve. I built fire the night before to get heat of large-mass oven up enough for bread, pie, & duck the next day. I banked it too much overnight. Built it about 9PM then blocked opening with bricks, leaving a little air to get through. Should have left, maybe, a full brick's width to keep it going better overnight. But did stuff it around sides with large oak pieces. Good coals in morning and wood left, puffed right up when I pulled bricks. Ultimately, it cooled down to quickly for the bread -- though still came out very good. Then put hot coals I'd pulled out before bread back in for duck (fire on both sides of pan). That worked great. Photos for anyone interested: photos.app.goo.gl/1FJiPm8pVFBFNPnb6

Great to hear! Thank you for the feedback!

i realize it is kinda off topic but does anybody know of a good website to watch newly released movies online?

@Preston Finley Lately I have been using flixzone. You can find it by googling =)

@Anders Zion Yup, have been using Flixzone for years myself =)

@Anders Zion Thanks, signed up and it seems like a nice service :) I really appreciate it !!

Our pleasure!

AGREED! We started doing that not long after too!

Thanks!

Haha thankyou!

No problem!

Thanks Wolvinius! It does make it a little easier haha

Hi Andy! Thanks for the encouragement!! Yep I have played with the top down method and it's pretty darn cool - I'm actually using a modified Fire and FOrget method at the moment where the 'Fort' section is a top-down fire, but the rest remains the same

@@TheFireBrickCo From the videos I've watched it seems to start slower.... does it take longer to heat up the oven?

That would work too!

Good question Marc - if your oven is good and dry then you should just be able to use the same method. The colder air will yield a slightly cooler fire at the beginning anyway, giving the structure a bit of extra time to heat up.

A few too many variables to be able to give you a good answer there, I would suggest having a crack and taking notes along the way, you'll soon learn how much wood you go through for the ideal firing for your particular oven

Hi Jorge, I usually would keep a couple of pieces of wood burning to maintain the high temperatures needed for pizza.

Hahaha don't worry they were still delicious!

Great question! We don't sell spark arrestors at this stage, however they're effectively just stainless steel mesh with a fairly tight aperture, you might be able to buy it at a local hardware store?

Good tip!

Great question! If you don't have good draw in the flue then dropping the front by 30mm wouldn't make a lot of difference, the smoke would still flow out the front regardless. The real problem though would be putting in the oven door - with the arch as it is we already need to tilt the door forward to get it all the way into the oven.

Good question Ben - I have been experimenting with building the fort fire upside down (heavy timber at the base, getting smaller as you go up, with kindling on top). This has made a big difference for me, give it a try!

Niiiice!

It's not something that we recommend - brick ovens aren't really designed for the rigours of hitting speed bumps at 50kph...

You could, but it would probably get covered with soot almost straight away - worth trying it out though!

Hahaha! Well? Is the neighborhood on fire?

Everything's still standing, against all expectations.. Great method. Far less labour intensive, left more time for beer. Which makes the fact that everything didn’t burn down all the more impressive.

I tried it in my smaller stone floor, metal insulated oven. It worked amazing although I need to scale it down a little. I nearly burnt the back of my house down 🤣

That's a good question - our commercial clients generally go through about 30kg of hardwood per day. Not sure what that would cost in your part ofd the world but it's a good starting point

Hi Ric, unfortunately not. We don't split the kits up at all, they come complete.

I guess it depends on the cost of firewood in your area - for the D105 it takes around 40kg of good quality firewood to reach 400C, so right now that would set me back about $15. This is one of the reasons that we encourage peopel to think about cooking more than just pizza - the oven will be hot for three days, so why not make use of all that retained heat by cooking a bunch of other dishes?

@@TheFireBrickCo very true, thanks for the reply. You've told me what I was after.

Great question! You can still build the fort on the floor of the oven, in the opening. I often do that now, as it has to be sized small enough to get through the opening anyway so it doesn't add too much difficulty to do it there instead.

@@TheFireBrickCo thanks, but cannot rest the door on the opening. Is there another way to do that?

You would need to get a couple of bricks to sit the door on I think - not ideal but it would work. It might not be quite stable enough though

I'm usually aiming for 400C or a little higher

Great question! You can use it in small quantities for doing low and slow cooking, but we don't recommend using it as the main fuel source as it burns far hotter than wood, and would put unneccesary thermal stress through the oven.

@@TheFireBrickCo thanks

Correct - we use the oven door to regulate the airflow into the oven but allow the flue to draw freely - if we installed a damper the door would have to be semi-permanently closed as the smoke would then just spill out of the mouth of the oven.

Thanks for reaching out to us guys, I hope the episode goes well for you!

That would work well!

🤨