Outdoor Wood Fire Oven

I’ve looked at the forno bravos for years, ended up building my own by hand of clay/mud. The FBs are a quality product with good support from the company.
Things to consider:
— is your oven going to be under an overhang or otherwise covered and out of the rain? If you read the fine print of most precast WFOs, they suggest only firing the oven if it is dry—so if you have a freestanding oven in south LA, you can go weeks without the oven being truly dry if it is freestanding in the open.
—Do you have a covered, dry place to store firewood?
—Do you have a reliable, steady source for quality hardwood to use as firewood? Burning softwoods will funk up the oven, esp pine, and may not generate sufficient heat to “soak” the oven for carryover cooking (like bread making or other long cooked dishes done in the falling heat of the oven after the fire is out/removed).
—a low domed pizza oven is not the same proportions as a higher domed bread/other stuff oven. Decide if you’re truly chasing 90-second pizza Napoletana Vera or if you want a more general use oven before you start picking out models.

I also considered the Four Grandmere ovens, check em out, LINK

If you're hardcore chasing 90 sec VPN, then check out the pizzamaking.com forum. It looks dated, but it is chock full of fantastic info, excellent pizza makers, and some very serious oven geeks.

Forgot to mention: make sure you look at prevailing winds/airflow around your oven site. Nothing like thinking you've got the perfect spot, but the dominant airflow runs all the smoke back toward your house/under patio cover. A low-roofed patio isn't a problem if you run a chimney pipe from the oven out to the side & above the patio roofline. Definitely check local building/fire codes & see if you are required to have a spark arrestor chimney cap and/or locate the oven a specific distance from house/structure.

I planned and plotted for years. Built one from scratch, then realized that it was a giagantic pain in the arse. I now make pizza (all the time) on a baking steel in my home oven (which has a wonderful broiler).

I turn on the oven, it gets to 500 in about an hour...and I've figured out that I preheat the baking steel with the broiler for about 10 mins while i prep the pizza, the stone gets to 700 degrees easily. Slip in the pizza, turn off the broiler, cook for a few minutes, then switch the broiler back on for top browning. Using that slightly fiddly but not too complex method, I can turn out a pretty closed to wood fired pie. Leopard spots on bottom, as much or as little char as I want on top. It's far easier than managing a fire, and it keeps me out of the heat and mosquitos while I'm cooking.

I still love the things, but I'm convinced that our climate is not conducive to WFO use for too much of the year. I still need to convert my concrete block oven base into an outdoor firepit.....maybe when the weather cools off, I'll get it done.

Broiler on the entire time was excessively charring some toppings. Hence the switch on and off method.

I trekked to Vermont years ago to take a multi day class in WFO baking/pizzas. It was great...but I’m not tending a WFO in 95 degree/100% humidity weather.

I build a Forno Brava Pompeii oven from the plans off their site. Let me know if you have questions related to that.

Yeah I see that with some toppings (sun dried tomatoes, nuts, etc...) but try and adjust by adding at end of bake.

When I poured the slab, I emptied half the bags on top of the plastic sheeting covering the ground. I added water and mixed it in place. I added rebar on top then mixed the remaining bags in a wheelbarrow. With a helper, I think we finished in about an hour. Later in the build, a friend let me borrow a mixer, but it was easier just to mix in a wheelbarrow. I used the home brew high temp mix, the fire clay came from a ceramic shop in the Mammoth Drive area and the lime came from the hardware store on Foster. That’s the only place I could find the right type of lime. I think the common stuff for agricultural use won’t work. Portland cement and sand came from Home Depot. It’s been a while so I may have fire brick brands wrong, but the Butler bricks around town are not as dense and uniform as the Halsey brand I bought in New Orleans. For a 42” oven I think I used 250 bricks. All that said, if I did it again I would strongly consider building a poured dome using refractory. The bricks look a lot better though. My dome is stucco. I added waterproofing to the mix, but it does get damp when it doesn’t have frequent use. To do a 90 second pizza cook, I do need to light a fire a day or two before to dry it out so that I get 900+ temps at the dome and 650 on the floor. I cook right on brick floor. Preheating isn’t necessary when I use it frequently. When it’s dry and I do a long/hot burn, the oven will still be a few hundred degrees days later. I bought the insulation from Distributors International in Gonzales. I have 3 to 4 inches of insulation board under the floor and a few inches of insulating cloth over the dome. That’s the key to holding in heat along with an insulated door. Email me at my screen name at g mail if you want some pics.