This is a project I'm designing as we go and my brother in law, Bonifacio (Sho) is building. Born in NYC, grew up in New Jersey before moving to Oregon, I know good New York style pizza.

Many things available to anyone with a large home center nearby are not to be found here on Bohol island in the Philippines. If you go to build one of these consider yourself lucky at what can be easily had! Some parts of this project caused me sleepless nights. The bricks we're using are made by a potter and fired in a kiln he built outside his house, hopefully mixed and fired to my specifications. You can buy refractory fire bricks, no problem. The pumice (cooled lava) insulation that is under the brick oven was hand picked at a volcano I can see from my home, across the Bohol Sea. We took my van and Sho's small pickup on a RORO ship and went and got the stuff, 35 cements sacks of it, one piece at a time. You can tell pumice from a rock because it floats and is lightweight. Red clay is dug out of the ground by the potter and provided by the bag as is silicate. River sand from deposits in the hills, gravel from the beach, and finally perlite, also from a volcano, was found in quantity from a hardware store, the last place I hadn't checked. Cooked (slaked iirc) limestone heated to a thousand degrees I tried to make myself in a home made kiln using the potters bricks, a failure as there is no coal here. Found it in 5 gallon buckets described as a stucco like material. 95% are needed refractory materials.

Its been a journey.

A pizza oven cooks pizza around 750F plus. Many things such as Portland Cement break down at these temps. That means new materials I've never worked with before, some taken directly from the Earth. Interestingly volcanoes produce some excellent heat resistant or 'refractory' materials.

Some of this project is behind me so I'll be starting with pics from the past and working towards the ever advancing present.

Myself, my wife and her 3 brothers and our Rottweiler, Gary. Sho is on the right.

The round posts are built by pouring concrete into rolled sheet metal forms which were held in shape by squares of plywood with circles cut out to the size of the post. The plywood was held in place by 2x3 frames which were connected to each other to provide support. Since we built this on a tiles floor which sits on solid packed limestone it was necessary to cut into the floor and hollow out a space under each post to form a foundation. The foundations are rough circles 2' across and under the floor. This is not exposed to high temps or direct fire so its standard concrete. We mix 1 Portland, 3 sand, and 4 gravel. The bar is 10mm.

The table is prepared for the pour, same recipe.

Post pour. We're adopting 2 kids, brother and sister. Abby (4) is checking out the build.

What's dis Tatay (papa)?

That's it for today. Please ask whatever questions and I'll try to answer as best I can.

Here's me and my lapdog, Gary, by the way.



A pic of the volcanic island we went to for pumice with an interesting cloud formation over. Camiguin Island has 7 volcanoes one of which is still active though sleeping at the moment.

Abby holding up the pour. You can see the structure of wood supports under the form of the pour. At this point the concrete is hardened and quite safe.

A pic of the failed kiln which was built out of the brick we later used for the oven. It failed because there is no coal anywhere near us. Instead we burned "coconut coal" which is coconuts made into charcoal. Didn't burn hot enough.

Last Christmas came and went. 2013

Here is the concrete basin pour filled with two insulating materials, pumice and perlite. The pumice will hold up the next pour the form of which we're working on here. The rock like pumice while very light has structural strength. Its a good insulator because it won't melt at a thousand degrees F and when it cooled from lava the gasses formed tiny bubbles which are good for containing heat. Around the rocks we poured perlite which also is formed in a volcano and when expanded by adding water becomes an excellent refractory insulator with an R factor of 12.5 per 4".

Regular rolled fiberglass insulation would melt.

An oven without insulation oven would never hold the needed temps. There are other materials which a person in the West could use, such as rock wool.

Fidel, our excellent carpenter, built the form for the oven floor pour. On top of this floor we put a fire brick floor and on that will be where the fire is and where the pizzas cook, or whatever we're making. This pour is refractory materials as well as insulating. No sand, perlite instead. Then clay as well as some portland. As the heat breaks down the Portland cement the clay gets stronger and stronger. Other ingredients are slaked lime, and silicate which are also refractory binders.

After the floor set up, which took about 4 days, Sho stated the first course of the brick!

I set the first 2 bricks for the door opening in place and scribed around them while Sho set bricks.

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That's it for today.

So I'm assuming you post a lot of parties and family get-togethers because that is one large oven:) Do you plan on doing a lot of your cooking outside?

Initially the plan was just for parties, we have some bigguns.

Then my wife suggested a family business. Extended family members sometimes come and ask for money. Her reasoning was that we could hire family plus offer work to the folks asking for a handout, see how much they really need it.

Wife is a smart lady. :b:

Matt, what is public access and why is it disabled? I'm a moderator on a Civilization gaming site called WePlayCiv and I've never seen it before...?

Edit: Got it, I was not yet logged in.

Might take a few days off posting in this thread and see if there is any interest in the build.

Looks like a party to me:) As you post I'm going to be sharing them on "www.fb.com/HomeFarmIdeas" so if you like keep them coming.

I'm definitely not a facebook guy and like a forum with more responses for my considerable efforts. Good luck!