A crackling fire and a fresh baked pizza, What a great evening for the whole family.

Click on any of the images for a larger picture.
 

The size of the fireplace is up to you, I had limited space to put one.
 As you see there is a fence right behind it, and a flagstone lanai in front.
 I made mine 4' wide, and 2' deep, I wasn't worried about height so I
played that by ear. a good foundation is a must because this is heavy
 and you don't want it to start sinking as time goes by.

The foundation was excavated out to hard packed soil, I had to
dig about 4" deep, level it and build a slab form to pour your
concrete base.
I reinforced the slab with rebar as I didn't want any cracking as
 time went by.

After the slab has cured I used 3 rows of cinder blocks as a pedestal
 to build the fireplace on as I didn't feel like bending over so far every
time I needed to build a fire. This put the bottom of the fireplace
about 2' off the ground. There is a row of cinderblock in the middle
also to add center stiffness to the entire base, then the holes were
back filled with gravel.

I then needed something as a base for the brick. I used 3/4" cement
board that is used widely for tile backer. You can see that the
cement board is sticking out 2" on both sides and front. This is
where I got the 2' by 4'' size. Also note, there is a 4" gap to the back
of the fireplace to protect the fence from getting too hot while the
 fireplace is in use. I used a high heat adhesive to fasten the cement
board to the cinder block.

One important thing to keep in mind when designing your fireplace
and oven is to make it so smoke will go where you want and not
out the front opening. There is a ratio you need to use, the opening
height has to be less then 3/4 of the total firebox height. In other
words, if the firebox is 3' high, the front opening can be no more
then 2' high or smoke will go out of the opening and not out the chimney.

I started with the outer wall of the firebox, I'll fill in the bottom of
the firebox later. I also pre stacked the brick before mortaring it j
ust to see how everything fit. I also chose to build this with the
bricks on edge . This makes the walls thinner, but gave me more
room inside. I did this because the limited space I had. If you have
the room, lay them in the normal manner.

One of the problems I was facing was how to make the firebox
top, incorporate a cooking surface, and route the heat and smoke
to the chimney. What I did was make a composite top, it had to
span the 2' by 4' firebox, take the heat, and be strong enough to
build the pizza oven on. It is made of a sandwich of materials, first
layer is 3/4" cement board, on top of that is 3/4" expanded steel
grate, on top of that is 2 1/2" of pored concrete. To vent the heat
and smoke I cut 2 - 6" holes in the cement board and steel grate
that I would later put short pieces of  chimney pipe in to vent the
smoke. These were placed in the back, 1 on each side. When
deciding where to place these at a location that would put them
on the rear corners of what will be your pizza oven. This will allow
the hot air swirl in the oven and make a convection type setup.
The cement board is fastened to the walls of the firebox with high
heat adhesive.
 

Building the dome for the oven was tricky. I have never done
curved brickwork before. Biggest trick is to make support forms
out of wood that will take the weight as the mortar dries.
You can do 1 row at a time while waiting for the mortar to cure.
Notice that the back wall was put up first, this gives you a
reference point for the oven dome. Remember you will need a
chimney, I chose to place it in the back, use a steel pipe. The
reason for this is I had to clear a roof so that's why it's in the
back, and I used the steel because of how high it had to go, 6'
and I thought that would be way too much brick.

Here is a close up of the oven. As you can see the cooking surface
is not in place yet, but you can see the holes in the back that bring
the heat from the firebox into the oven. You can also see the first
rows of the oven dome.

The arched openings for both the firebox and the oven were
done with wooden forms use to support the brick as the mortar
dried. Here you can see the arched one for the firebox, and a square
one for the oven opening. The arch for the oven will be put up in a
later stage.

You can see the arch is in place, and the tile is now in place.
Please note an important part of the oven. Look at the dome,
 there is a 2 1/2" layer of insulating concrete. this is made by mixing
in perlite with the mortar. this acts like an insulation, I added 1/2 of
the total volume of mortar as perlite. So, if you have 1cf of mortar,
use 1/2cf of perlite. This is put on the dome to both strengthen it, and
hold the heat in.
 

As you can see, there is snow on the ground, so it was getting late
in the year. Something to remember is, the concrete fully cure
BEFORE ever starting a fire. I let mine sit a full week, then I only
built a small fire that just barely got the brick warm. You would not
want to spend all this time and work to build a fire too soon and ruin
the mortar joints.

Well here it is in use. As finishing touches I put colored stucco on the oven dome, and the cinder block base. Another thing I did was to use travertine tile to border the edges, this was broken up with hand painted ceramic tile I brought back from Hawaii last year.

The fireplace can add about 20 degrees to the lanai on a cool evening giving us a lot more use in the Spring and Fall.