Fitting a flue

 I've had to use a bit of thought on how to get the small throat I gave the oven to connect to the Flue pipe.  There's not an anchor plate available so after playing around a bit I come up with the best solution I could. There may be better ones but I am not aware of any.  If I was building this oven again I would change the size of the throat opening for the vent.  I did make it bigger all ready but I think it would benefit from being wider and a bit deeper.  My oven still works but this is an improvement I think could be made.

 One issue is how to prevent the metal flue expanding and cracking the mortar.  I bought a stove adapter for the flue, meant for going into a stove or boiler, there is no anchor plate available and if there was I don't have a big enough area to attach one. I wrap the flue adapter on the outside with a layer of cardboard and use a cut piece of polystyrene from some packaging to get the height and to stop cement falling through later.  My idea is the cardboard will help me to form a shape for the adapter with heatproof screed that is larger than the size of the adapter by about 3mm all round.

 From this I get a solid form surrounded in Firebricks so it is pretty strong.  Later when it's dried out I remove the adapter and screed all around the firebricks on the outside ond over so they are protected from the weather and insulated well.  I refit the adapter using a lot of Heatproof silicon that is meant to be safe up to 1250c but later I read it should not be exposed to a flame, which worried me bit so I lined the inside of the flue where it is joining the vent and the silicon could be exposed to a flame. I lined it with some Fibre Blanket I found on ebay that is only a few millimeters thick and stuck it with the Vitcas Ceramic Fibre Glue.   I have read of lots of people having problems with silicon fitting the flue with the silicon disintegrating and cement breaking up...   I hope I won't have this problem... I hope my precautions will be enough to stop it...   I'll let you know if this falls to pieces.

 This is the 8 inch twin wall flue adapter, you can see the vent opening lined with the ceramic fibre. Ideally the vent should be shaped better but this still works.

 The flue makes a big difference to the draw and keeps smoke away better. There is a damper fitted as well. The flue wasn't cheap but it is making a big difference and will be needed to get up through the roof of the Gazebo later.

Running costs  £1828.76 to date.

£7.99 Silicon 1250c heatproof sealant.
£2.39  Ceramic fibre 12"X 24" millimeter thick (eBAY)
£9.84 Vitcas Ceramic Fibre Adhesive (eBay)

Flue Supplies
£117.82  8" twinwall (T/W)  1m lenght
£134.75  8" Draft Damper T/W
£38.53    8" Roof Support T/W
£95.40    8" All weather cowl T/W
£42.60    8" Adaptor  to single wall T/W

New running cost - £2278.08

Things I learned so far...

A Nutella Pizza is ace.

Steaks taste fantastic in this oven as does anything I cooked so far. Vegetable potatoes, bread, all taste considerably better.
I have made the best pizza I ever tasted and I still don't know exactly what I am doing. I haven't used the 'proper' pizza flour yet either.
I really liked the tomato, cheese, artichoke, mushroom and whole egg in the middle pizza.

This oven is ace...  I don't know why there aren't more of them. It's so satisfying and there is a marked improvement in flavours. This is way better than a Barbecue or a domestic oven. It's just the wood thing I guess that puts people off it, the work involved with getting the timber and cleaning the oven and pre heating....  When did we lose touch with this type of cooking?  Am I going to start piling on the pounds now? So many questions... So many recipes to try...