How to build a brick pizza oven

hi i'm craig phillips in this video i'm going to show you how to build this wood-fired pizza oven with a beautiful cast iron door lots of storage space underneath for your wood and the structure is built in an arc shape with a square chimney like this a full gatherer inside going through a flu and a cap on the top now the materials and tools you're going to require to build your pita oven are fire line bricks engineer and bricks both powdered and pre-mixed fireproof mortar sand a tape measure spirit levels a bricklaying trowel a lump hammer and a bolster for cutting the bricks and also it helps if you have a grinder different size pointing trowels a plaster and hawk and a plastering trowel shovels and a wheelbarrow so when i'm building a solid structure like this one but quite small i always prefer to lay the first couple of courses the day before so they're completely solid and dry or else when i'm trying to build up both sides here and i'm moving bricks and i'm moving mortar i end up catching them with my feet or the spirit level and all of a sudden knocking them bottom ones out and that's what you don't want to do because of course it's very important to get all the corners perfectly level but they're now nice and solid so i can quickly lay my bricks right the way around so to lay a really good brick you want to kill your cement over like this creating a nice little round circular shape like that and then you drop her into position and just using the edge of your trowel put that down into position if you've never laid bricks before it's worthwhile spending a good 10 minutes 20 minutes just doing a little practice run with your mortar on a couple of scrap bricks before you start trying to build your main structure there we go so that there is probably standing about probably 20 millimeters high there's lots of little cavities in it that i'm creating like this with the edge of the trowel and then i'll place my first brick which of course has a nice smooth edge on one side and the two sides here this back side is the manufactured rougher side so that always stays on the inside i'm placing it down just nice and gently on here lining it up with my corners here and here and then i'm just going to gently give it a tap with the edge of my trowel you'll start to see the mortar coming out [Music] of the edge then you take your spirit level you offer it up against the bottom one that's why i wanted these ones to be relatively set i'll do the same again on this outside edge here when i'm happy with that i know i can continue building so the path here we only want it to be about 10 millimeters thick making sure it's level that way as well i'm going to place on here of course it's going to be there i need to get it level here level there and of course level across the top but i want the mortar to be filled in here so i take this brick and get a small amount off here again turning it over making it nice and sticky and then place it on there like this and give it a little tap down and that way it's going to fill that gap there i can fill the inside in a moment and if i hold it upright like this all the time because it will slip off i slowly place that against that brick i'm going to put a little bit of pressure on here because i don't want to knock that away but i do want that to bond so we'll gently tap it you can see the water starting to ooze out a little bit tap it down these particular engineering bricks do have holes in them so the motor is starting to push its way off when i tap down along the top and that's helping grabbing it and keeping it into position check that i'm leveling off on the top then i want to check my sides and i'm flushing level here and again on the very front flush and level now this time we're going to be connecting there so again i get a little bit more of my mortar just pat it down cut off any excess i'd probably say that that is about probably 12 to 14 millimeters thick on there and then again i'm placing it into position a little bit of pressure on this one because i don't want to move it remember my mortar still is a little bit wet under there just tapping it down striking it off what you're not going to use because the main aim is to always try to keep the face of these brick as clean as possible it can be cleaned up afterwards but you don't want to be making more work for yourself so the key is to take your time now get your spirit level perfectly level on there again at any point you can double check that they are keeping flush with this brick and the lower bricks by putting your spirit level diagonally here when you're happy with that you can continue along the course you can fill in them gaps in between them once they get a little bit more steadier this time i'm going to put a little bit of mortar on the edge of that brick pull that one in whenever you're getting a couple of courses up always checking that your two outside edges are perfectly level you can get a long straight edge this is a six foot one i'm just double checking from corner to corner yeah we're perfect on there soon again corner to corner yes perfect again on there which is good [Music] so so now i'm four courses up here i can start thinking about the actual point and most of it doesn't need filling in because we've got that with the bed of mortar that we put on we tap the brick down and it's used out the side we've either trimmed it off or scooped it back up but the odd little areas like this here you're going to get some cavities so we want to grab a small piece on there and just place it in like that we don't have to worry about it looking neat at the moment it's just about filling in that cavity you don't want to get very much on the brick of course trying to keep that as clean as possible but just filling in any little gaps and i'm using my normal trowel a pointing trowel and just pressing it in on the surface once this is bit it starts to dry off i'm going to come back later and actually point it all up but the main thing is is getting them gaps just filled for now now for these type of structures there's usually a couple of different types of point methods you can use one is a weatherstruck one where you take the edge of your point and trowel you press in on the underside of this top brick here and you strike the mortar like this and what that's doing is it's smoothing it off to make it waterproof and any rain on the outside of course would hit the side of the brick come down drip into that and then drip off the face of the brick and not actually absorb into it so it's flush to the top of this brick and then it's cut in a little bit at the top of that one and that one is called a weatherstruck quite often see it on the side of houses and things like that or you can have a bucket handle one which you get a tool and it's a kind of a more of a half moon round shape here and that way we run into it like this so again we're pushing the mortar in that little bit deeper we're making it nice and smooth so it is waterproof but aesthetically we're making it all look the same way so it's just going to the top of this brick and also the bottom of that brick and it's creating that concaved kind of round shape in there and this one's called the bucket handle and then once this is dry you just take your brush and brush over the face of the brickway take off all them little edges of mortar off there if you do get any stubborn bits of cement on the brick it's wise to try and clean them up now yeah of course once they're dry it's going to be a little bit harder so as you can see start at the bottom i've come up with eight courses which is a double skin solid one right the way around all three sides of it and then the ninth and the tenth course i put a single skin on on the outside face of it the reason being i'm now at a point now where i need to bridge across with some lintels in here so i only need to break up this side along here and here and the back and then my lentils the concrete precast ones they're going to sit on here and they're actually going to come forward so what i need to do next is cut a couple of pieces of steel which will sit on here take the lintels sitting into place there and then also the front steel will hold the face and brick that bridges across the front there to give you that storage space below your peter oven so now i'm about to put these steels on and put a small bed of mortar on both sides nice and thin just about five millimeters thick i'm going to take my base steel lintel which is going to sit on here these are engineered and bricks so they are good for taking an impact load on top of them just setting that just about 10 ml behind the face of that brick so i can still get some water in there and point it up my spirit level on here it's a piece of angle line i'm using that's perfect i'm happy with that one there in the front which i'm going to be laying facing brick across here and that'll continue across there however these ones at the back which is now going to be that way off so the lintel will actually sit on this piece so i lower that down here and i'm putting it back to back with that one it's sitting on top of the brick of course about 110 millimeters each side a gentle little tap we know that front one's level so i'm just going to tap this one and just check it with my hand to make sure it's flush on that side and yeah that is again we don't really need a gap in them just nudging that back right then now i'm ready to get my mortar and start fitting the concrete lintels i'm going to put the first one across here they're 140 millimeters wide by a hundred millimeters deep so they will hang over here but of course they're going to be sitting on this back double skinner brickway and then onto this steel here i'm going to lie this right on top of here almost but up to that brickwork now again the widths that i've set this out like i mentioned earlier in my plans this is to fit my lintels that are 140 145 millimeters wide these by the time they're buttered up to fit so many in here and bridge across this gap to give me a nice solid uh top to this kind of underspace and also a bait of course to the oven okay two four six seven of these lintels have landed now the 1200 millimeters in length 100 mil deep and 140 mil wide on this saturn sat on flat so they're standing up 100 millimeters and as you can see now this second course of brick that i've put in is standing proud standing proud around about 45 50 millimeters so all i've got to do now is build a course along the back this then will act as a retainer and i'm going to leave this to dry overnight so these courses here are nice and dry by the morning then i'm going to mix up a really strong concrete mix with a fireline cement mixed in with it and it's going to be screeded over the top of this and leveled out to this brickwork foreign so now i've laid my last course of bricks around the top they're standing proud of the concrete lintel so i've got a little bit of mortar left here i have added a little bit of the fireline cement in with this which will make it go off a little bit quicker and of course make it stronger for any heat and i'm just backing up behind these here just to give it a little bit of strength because tomorrow when it's fully dry i will be dropping my concrete mix in here but this certainly will show the back up this little row along here if you look closely on that it's not a course of bricks it's actually against some of the the block behaviors that i had left over from doing my front drive uh they're only 50 millimeters thick so sitting on top of this lintel actually brings it up the same height as my brick for me so it acts as a former to hold all this into place when i concrete it tomorrow so the brickwork i did yesterday is now dry likewise with the concrete precast lentils so my next stage in here i'm going to mix a nice lean concrete using some fireproof cement and spread this all the way across here tamper it all down make it nice and level and then leave that to set i've got four tubs of ballast here which is a granite and also a sharp sand already all mixed together pebbles and all sorts in there to really stiffen it up and then i've got one full bucket of the fireproof cement now i'll leave that to mix up for about five or ten minutes put it in my wheelbarrow take it round and start to lay now if you don't happen to have a concrete mix or a cement mixer at home of course you can mix it up by hand if you check out one of our other videos on a barbecue build you see me make up some concrete the same as this by hand and lay the foundations for the barbecue and i also mix up some mortar ready to lay the bricks by hand so this concrete is about probably about 55 60 millimeters thick now and i'm just using a heavy plank to tamper it down and what this is doing is actually vibrating the concrete and taking all the air out of it making it more compact so it's going to be stronger and then using a lighter plank like this aluminium one i can just kind of saw across the top and then if any bits are kind of a bit wavy and standing proud this will actually take them out for me up so now the screed on the top is almost dry i've give that a little buffing over and i'm starting to lay the fire brick the main structure around the outside is the engineering brick of course but this is the fire brick it's 50 millimeters deep and i'm basically laying it directly on top of the semi-dry screed that's below so they don't need to be bedded down but just literally place down nice and flat and this would be the actual surface that you're cooking from so these fire bricks will of course retain the heat once you've got the flame lit inside there and of course stopping any more heat traveling through into the surface below which is what we don't want now the screed below my fire brick is set and it's nice and solid i can work on top of it so my next stage is to now build an actual arch to create the shape of my pizza oven so to do this i've constructed a format like this and the height and the width of this is 500 millimeters high by 760 millimeters wide i'll explain this circle a little bit later on and this is constructed of uh basically three pieces of 18 millimeters osb board i've cut out that r shape this is standing up here this straight edge is standing up about 225 which is about the three three quarters of brick i put a little noggins in between just to stabilize it up and make it nice and strong so this is going to be in position like that then i'm going to get some old pallet slats these are going to be fixed on there all the way around because of course they're going to hold the brickwork and once the brickwork is all the way around this then has to be left in place for about 10 days before you can remove it you're probably thinking how is he going to remove it well when i've got my door on here and my chimney built up in the front of course i'm not going to be able to remove that once the brickwork is set so it will be banned out that's the only way but we'll come back to that later we're then going to use our fire line brick this time a 65 mil one which is going to be but up nice and tight onto the former this is going to come right up on here and of course start to work its way around we're going to have a cavity in here and we're going to use a ceramic insulation which is designed for ovens and clay ovens and pizza ovens this would be fitted into there and then the outside engineering brick which of course we're going to see the face of that along this edge and along the front here is going to be our red engineering brick and that will come up like this now what we need to do is form the two sides three courses on that side and three courses on this side all the way around to set for at least 24 hours before we start to build across our arch because what you don't want to happen is you start to build on one side work your way up and then all of a sudden that slides across there and falls out of shape so get your two courses up either side and around the back let that set and then we can start breaking it from both sides and work our way to meet in the middle [Music] so now this back wall here is of course the back end of the pizza oven it's the closest one to my neighbor's fences here as you know we're doing a cavity wall around here which is going to have the insulation in place but when i put my wooden former here start building my arch around because of the lack of access behind me i would have struggled getting these on so i've built this up first i've took it off probably about another seven or eight courses there which will be above the base of the pita oven itself and what that's going to do is act as two ways help hold all the structure of it all together help contain the heat in it like the arch will of course with the insulation but also acting as another barrier to stop that heat penetrating through and actually making the fence the wooden fence around us getting too warm uh so okay so the brickwork we did yesterday which is these sections here and here now have dried i put my wooden former in yesterday so that'll hold that into place and i've also got another piece of angle iron here i've cut it just to bridge across my opening here and that's going to allow me to now put my fire bricks on the top of the former here to create this arch what i want and it's going to bridge across and hold it and support it there for me as well now to get my fire brick started around here we're going to use the 65 millimeter ones and they're going to be bedded on at this angle all the way along here however to hold them into position i've had to cut a couple of the bricks right down the center there on an angle at a 45 degree angle now these are the 50 millimeter fire bricks these ones down here that are used for the base of it so i've cut them and what they do is they will hold like this they'll be bedded in place and then the bricks will start to go on them and that'll act as a bit of a wedge really it'll hold it hold it nice into position and take this weight and then of course i can start to bond my bricks all the way across here as i go now i'm going to be using a fire line pre-mixed mortar for these bricks going across here because it's going to be quite a thin joint on there however on this area here i use the fire cement and mix that in with my mortar mix myself because of course we've got 10 and 15 millimeter beds there holding that into position uh so i'm going to start by fixing this down making sure it's level just with a little bit of the pre-mixed mortar underneath we'll take it up a little bit and that gives me an opening there of about 300 millimeters which is about the top of my door height as well so i'll cut this with the bolster the lump hammer there we go now i've mixed up a nice lean uh mortar with the fire cement in it just to infill my gap there as opposed to using the pre-mixed fire mortar just so i can make it a little bit thicker and build it up there i'm trying to make it nice and smooth on that one edge because when that former is out when it's burnt out that's gonna seal be sealed there you see on that end and of course it will hold my second brick in there then when we're forming this off so so so that's now five quarters of five bricks standing up on its end here bedded into place i've pointed up the back of them there and i'm just going to leave them to set a little bit more before i wedge my two final pieces in there they've got to be spliced and wedged in there to create the strength now i'm going to tear my focus onto where i'm going to set the actual oven door itself so it's going to be round about this position here i'm going to bed one more fire brick to close this area off and then i'm going to start to retain my corner so i'm just going to bed a half in here and then start to retain that this way with the red bricks like that and then step that in or return that corner should i say into here and into here and then a three-quarter cut into there and bring myself up to there that will be a kind of a closure of this area here and then it allow me to sit my gatherer then on the top of the door on the top of here and the top of these two side bricks which will give me a gap in there where i can set my flue and take out any smoke so now these two i'm betting on and i'm just starting to step them in a little bit and it'll create a little bit of a draw here for me uh so okay so now this last top two pieces i'm cutting some there's a shape like this for a little angle on it all you need to do is put a full brick here and mark it either side with your pencil and then grind it down and create that shape so i'm going to place that in here and that'll wedge in nice and tight and i'm putting three of them in one at the front one at the back and one here in the center and then we will place some full ones in like this but up against that with one with a little slithering which again will be glued into this one and that'll tie into that full brick on here it really is a good job nobody actually sees this inside of course because it gets buried by the insulation and then the second skin because it is rather quite messy saying the least piece here to slide in i'm just going to wet this fire line brick this isn't quite completely dry yet i've only done it today but it's starting to cure and of course the fire mortar it dries quite a bit quicker so it is feeling nice and stiff but not completely cured and then i'm going to do a layer of sanding cement on top like a render i'm just going to slap it on the top like this when i was pointing the ends of it i dug my trowel in a little bit just to make a little lip along them edges and it'll help this render actually stick to it i'm just lightly going up and down on it spreading it in not too thick just about 20 millimeters thick this is another lean sand and cement mix with the fire cement in it and it's got a little bit of building sand probably about one bucket of building sand two buckets of sharp sand and then one bucket of the fire cement so it will go off quite quickly on me and i put a little layer of chicken wire in there just to reinforce it that little bit more i'm just putting a lot of pressure on this and i'm kind of zigzagging it a little bit left just to spread it around that shape that i want i'm just starting to bridge up above this oven door now getting these a bit of an awkward cutter in place and starting to form the outside edge of my arch on here and you can probably see i've cut away some of the insulation just across there pointed it all up and these bricks the fire bricks as i've been building up on the inside i've been stepping them in a little bit just to create a chimney stack in there and that draws any smoke and unwanted heat then up the top and straight through where the gatherer is going to be sat along the top of there and then of course the brickwork will come around it i'll take my chimney up a little bit higher and then we'll have a cap on the top of it there so as you can see i've placed the metal gatherer in the top here to act as a chimney basically we've created a hole in there as we've continued the arch around there we've stopped with that little hole to let the heat and the smoke draw out of that this metal gatherer sits on top it's simply bedded on with mortar and then bricked up all the way around it now of course we are going to get some kind of small relatively ugly cuts around that but do not worry about it because visually you will see all of this arch however when we get this in place once this is set we can then form a little brick pillar which goes all the way around now to create a chimney stat technically three or four quarters high in fact the taller the better because it'll draw that smoke and heat out of there and aesthetically it'll look great too [Music] now that's the brickwork now complete on my archway all the way at the front and right the way to the back i've pointed it in here nice and tight and then give it a little brush down before it's completely dry the next stage is we fitted the gathering that's been pointed around it so it's nice and secure i'm going to now use a one meter flue okay this is going to be slid over the top there slot into position you tighten that up of course check it with the spirit level whilst you're tightener making sure it's nice and square and level and then the next stage is to build a little brick chimney breast around there so i'm going to get my bricks probably cut this down into a three-quarter brick and then start to form what will be like a little pillar which of course a brick uh chimney breast around there maybe only coming up about three to four quarters on there point it in make sure it's nice and tight and it holds the flue into place and then of course the heat will drive up there the smoke will drive up there and when it gets to the top it will escape now the top of it you are going to want one of these caps which slides down into that that stops any rain of course coming in today and beds or anything that might want to try and get down there when it's not in use okay [Music] so that's my fourth and final course of brickwork on the chimney stack here i'm just going to fill in some of these pipes here with a little bit of the mortar let that dry off re-point it up and then bag rub it down then the next stage is the bedroom mortar on the top of here just gently sloping it away from the actual chimney flue there just to give it a little bit of a fall if the rain comes on there it'll drip off the front then the last final thing is the weather cap on the top so it's been two weeks now since i finished the structure on my pizza oven so it's ready to set a light for the very first time now i've put a little bit of cardboard in the back of it and i've got some paper i'm going to like this because all i want to achieve today is to ban out this wooden frame that we originally built to put in to start the first course of brickwork around so that's some cardboard in and paper we like that now hopefully i've inspired you to build your own pizza oven but if you're looking for more inspiration check us out on all social media handles don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel and if you want more information about the tools i've been using just check out our website silverlinetools.com

Channel: Silverline Tools

Views: 922,270

Keywords: silverline, silver line, silver lining, tools, hand tool, power tool, tool.diy, d.i.y, how to, cheap tool, diy project, woodwork project, projects, fix, mend, build, home improvements, handy man, home maintenance, pizza, oven, home cooking, bricklaying, bricks, cooking, outdoors

Id: zpnIPZtpq5Y

Length: 41min 5sec (2465 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021