how to make a pizza oven
From Habitat magazine - issue 19
They're the latest on-trend addition to our outdoor living spaces – pizza ovens.
You will need:
- Trailer to collect the pizza oven kit and tools
- Concrete mixer
- Wheelbarrow or large oval tub to hold mortar
- Spade to mix mortar
- Water-measuring vessel
- Battery-powered drill with bits Electric brick saw or small angle grinder with masonry disk
- Bricklayer's trowel
- Dumpy-style hammer
- Box cutter
- Gloves and safety goggles
- Hearth brush for clean-up
- Pizza oven kit – we bought ours from the Brick & Cobble Factory
Instructions:
Decide on your base – we used a welded stand with concrete slab top, which you can make or have made. Or you could position the oven on the top of a block-work stand. The kit comes with a hearth but this needs to sit on top of something. Use the drill to remove the pallet frame from the hearth.
Supplies
Step 1a
Step 1b
Step 1: Lay the two layers of insulation tiles on top of the hearth in the sequence shown in the kit. Build the brick arch for the oven opening first, using the template and instructions provided, and mixing the mortar and special fire mix in the wheelbarrow.
Build the outer arch at the oven mouth as per instructions (this can also be done later), including the flue tile mount and flue.
Step 1c
Step 2a
Step 2b
Step 2 : Working from either left or right, lay out the bottom course of bricks. Cut any bricks to fit as necessary. Protect the hearth tiles outside the oven with plastic sheeting or a cloth. Add a second and third course of bricks.
Step 3
Step 4a
Step 4b
Step 3: The form of the dome is now shaped using bags of pumice insulation supplied with the kit. Once you have the desired shape, hopefully as close to a sphere as possible, you can lay the rest of the brick courses, finishing with the dome cap.
Step 4: Wrap the oven in the foil provided and apply the exterior render in one go, smoothing it out with a bricklayer's trowel for a smooth finish or by gloved hand for a rougher finish.
All equipment and expertise from Hirepool. Visit www.hirepool.co.nz or call 0800 15 15 15.
oven built by: Ivano Gola