Build your own pizza oven: Vermiculite Board and fire bricks

Posted by sophiamilller on September 20th, 2013

If you think you can build at least a decent pizza oven or just a fireplace with simple bricks, you’re wrong. While the construction you create might look like a good pizza oven, it still won’t be one. It’s important to remember that when you are dealing with sources of heat, fire bricks and Vermiculite Board should be used in place of simple bricks. This is because fire bricks and Vermiculite Board have several very important properties: they are fire-resistant, and typically have low thermal conductivity. If you use the usual building materials that cannot boast high levels of fire resistance, such as common brick, you won’t be able to create a lasting, safe and efficient pizza oven.

You will run into a number of problems that will make your pizza oven unusable and dangerous, and while you might save money on materials in the short run, in the long run it won’t pay for itself. This is not the case when proper materials that boast high levels of heat resistance, such as Vermiculite Board or fire bricks, are used. There are several reasons that make heat resistance important in building a pizza oven.

First one is, of course, safety. Pizza ovens, and in fact any type of oven or fireplace, is a hotspot for burns (put not intended) and fire. Whether you are building a pizza oven for commercial or private use, you know that safety comes above all else, and that if fires or burns can be prevented with a little spending, then that spending is justified. Ovens made from simple bricks aren’t very heat resistant. They will absorb heat from the oven, become hot and radiate the heat, making it harder to be near the oven, burning people who touch it and potentially causing fires if flammable materials are near.

An oven made with Vermiculite Board or fire bricks has none of these problems. Thanks to high level of heat resistance these materials boast, heat will be trapped inside the oven, making at safer and more comfortable to be close to. That’s just one reason to use specialized materials when building an oven. Another important reason is efficiency. Since energy isn’t wasted on heating up the air around the bricks from which the oven is made, you need less fuel for the same amount of useful heat.

Your third reason to use Vermiculite Board and fire bricks is longevity. These materials are special in that they easily survive extended exposure to high temperatures. As the usual bricks get heated up and expanded and then gradually cool down and contract. After several such processes the oven will start to deform, and as times goes on, it will become less safe and efficient, eventually becoming unusable. The same goes for bricks themselves. After several heating up and cooling down cycles, the bricks might start to crack. This is not the issue with Vermiculite Board and fire bricks, and that’s why you should use them when building any types of fireplaces or ovens.

If you’re going to build your own fireplace, oven or pizza oven, don’t forget that you have to use VermiculiteBoard and fire bricks if you want your construction to last.