With my father-in-law visiting, we decided to build a brick pizza oven to keep him busy, learn new skills, and to fulfill our dream of cooking lahmacun and pizza in our back-yard. In this post, I will share the material cost and some pictures of the progress.

Permit

First I’ve checked with San Jose Permit Center. Our house is in Planned Development (PD) zone, but they have confirmed that there is no restriction on building other than the typical residental zone requirements. The oven is an “Accessory Structure” and there is no permit requirement since the size is less than 120 square feet. There is no set-back requirement but the height of the structure has to be less than 12 feet.

Then, I’ve called San Jose Fire Department, Bureau of Fire Pervention and Permits. They confirmed that no permit is required for contained wood-burning structure. If we were to use gas, then, we would need to take a permit and would need inspection.

Materials

Total cost of the oven was $1,725, breakdown is below. This is 2019 cost and obviously does not include labor :)

Construction

We started with building the foundation. It is a simple concrete block.

We built one layer of brick wall on the foundation. On top of the brick, a base layer is built using concrete which is reinforced by iron bars.

Before building the “oven” itself, we built the outside wall first. That way, it is easier to set the scale of the oven using firebricks (yellow ones).

Once the outside is complete, we start by building the base of the oven. For oven, you can not use regular mortar. We found “refractory” “high-temperature” mortar in one of the neighborhood hardware stores (Lowe’s or Home Depot does not carry it). However, it was too expensive.. It would have costed us ~$600 just for the mortar. So, we decided to mix our own using a formula that I’ve found online. Here is the formula:

  • One part regular (Portland) cement
  • Three part sand
  • One part lime
  • One part fireclay (clay)

(The formula above seems to work just fine. I have not seen any cracks inside the oven or on the base after using it a couple of times)

For the dome, we have bended two iron bars and used scrap wood to build a base to lay bricks on.

Here is how the chimney entrance looks like..

Here is the final product :)