Hello Rado,
I want to thank you for helping me build our family’s brick oven in our farm.
Joel of Ilog Maria inspired me and started me off with the design and then the building of our oven based on your design and his experiences.
I started building our oven in July of 2009 and got it partially completed a month after having started it. It was already functional even without the insulation and we had our first pizza party for our family reunion.
Our father passed away a month before and my siblings got together including a brother and a sister who were abroad.
I decided to name our oven “Pizzeria Agustini” after my father.
It was such a personal fulfillment for me and a great activity for family bonding that we just kept on baking pizzas even without the insulation and a chimney.
A few months after, I got around to completing the insulation and the oven was able to retain heat much better.
Now that the summer months are over and we’re in the cooler months leading up to Christmas my wife gave me an ultimatum to finish the oven and put up the chimney or we wouldn’t be making any trips up to the farm.
It took longer for me to conceptualize the chimney because I wanted to build a little fireplace below the oven so we could light a small fire on cold days and enjoy baking pizza in the wood fired oven at the same time.
I had to split the smoke chamber and invert their orientation from left to right and vise-versa in order to have the flue on either side of the oven.
I then finished the skin of the oven with building bricks and finally poked the chimney through the roof of our “pizza hut”.
The result is a great oven and a little fireplace to boot.
Pizzeria Agustini – all fired UP!
Thank you so much for your unselfish tutorials and information and helping us build our precious oven.
I wish you happiness and constant fulfillment.
Our warmest regards,
Tony – oven built in Philippines
Great story Antonio. One day I must visit Philippines. Glad to see you guys build proper size flue vents on your ovens (can’t single this out enough to builders as an important matter.)
And thank you very much for your nice words about my work.
Many friends and family have shared in the warmth of our MTo oven.
Anytime you want to visit just let us know and we’ll gladly be your tourist guides. :)
More power!
More power for you too. We’ll be planning an Europe trip soon, cannot say whether we could pop in Philippines on the way…
That would be great. If you do make it to the Philippines we’d be happy to have you stay at our farm if you have the time.
You are a very neat worker as well. Nice oven and the hut must be very practical and pleasing entertaining area indeed.
Thanks Dada. It’s a work in progress but yes you’re right. It becomes the center of entertainment especially when the weather cooperates.
Hi tony! Very nice looking wood fired brick oven. I am actually looking for a designer, can you share with me who is your designer for your brick oven (need a detailed design).
Thanks in advance!
I too would like to built a oven/fireplace combo. Can you share any details on the venting for the fireplace as this is key to the whole project? Thanks for any help from a fellow builder.
Tony, I want to build a woodburning pizza oven using 1/4″ or 3/8″ black iron steel, I would roll it into a barrell, super insulate the exterior and then have an outer black iron steel of 1/4″ or 3/8″, do you know if there is a problem using the steel in instead of the fire brick. Commercial stack pizza ovens are built with an interior of steel.
Great job on your oven !
Bob in Phoenix, Arizona
Hi Tony,
are the materials for building easy to find in Manila? How much would you estimate building materials will cost for a small MTo oven?
Thanks!