I am looking at building a charcoal bbq from either brick or concrete blocks. The price of bricks is very expensive so I am swaying towards the blocks. Has anyone built a bbq with concrete blocks and has there been any problems with concrete due to heat? TIA
Concrete will be fairly rapidly destroyed at somewhere over 100C, the water used to make it "boils off", and it disintegrates into a pile of dust. If it's not exposed to actual flame, it'll probably be OK.
At university we built ourselves a barbecue.
4 aerated concrete blocks from a nearby retaining wall as legs (two blocks on end per leg). Then the fire surface was a cracked concrete paving flag. The back and sides of the surface were windproofed using several old grade B bricks found semi-submerged into some flower bed. The grille was formed by a chrome wire shelf rescued from our fridge which had fortuituously exploded some weeks earlier and been replaced.It was the best barbecue I've ever used. Easy to light, and excellent at keeping a nice medium heat for long periods, much better than any commercially bought one.
The next best barbecue I've used was built entirely from concrete decorative buff walling blocks from B&Q with their built in barbecue kit (grille + fire pan). The hot concrete goes a little pink, which is soon unnoticeable due to the pleasing carbon patina that develops over the season.
I'd be a little concerned about using aerated concrete for this, but dense concrete would be fine.
Christian.
If that were so reinforced concrete buildings would have next to no fire resistance.
Make most of the bbq out of concrete and use a couple of courses of proper bricks near the hot part.
sPoNIX
I have a barbeque and pizza oven built of concrete building blocks. They came with the house and I've never used them, but they appear to have seen plenty of use with no obvious signs of problems.
Colin Bignell
nightjar I have a barbeque and pizza oven built of concrete building blocks. They
Outdoor pizza oven? What a *fantastic* idea! Are you able to post a picture?
I used the bricks out of an old night storage heater. (Often free, look in local paper) they have cracked a bit but hold the heat in well
Nick Brooks
In some ways it's the other way round. The act of boiling off absorbs an enormous amount of energy. I don't know the exact temperature, it's not 100C, but significantly higher, as the water has reacted with the cement and is largely bound into the structure.
When we have time we're going to build an outdoor bread oven - an 'earth oven'. It will cook anything, including pizzas.
Mary
Below 300 C No appreciable damage done
300 to 500 C Damage to concrete requires careful assessment (especially above 400C). Concrete will be weakened and some loss of modulus will have occurred. Prestressing will be down to 50% of its strength above 400C and cold worked steel will be affected above 450C.Above 500 C
At these temperature significant loss of strength occurs in the concrete and the modulus of the concrete is significantly reduced.
Colin Bignell wrote | I have a barbeque and pizza oven built of concrete building blocks. | They came with the house and I've never used them ...
You should invite your neighbours round to a party as a thank-you for keeping an eye on the house whilst you were over in r.t.e. :-)
Owain
That could be difficult. It is in the South of France and I'm not. Essentially, it appears to be a tunnel, built onto the side of the barbeque chimney, with a hinged iron door. I presume it works like an old-fashioned bread oven - you build a fire inside to get everything hot, rake out the fire and then put the pizza inside to cook. Personally, I prefer to use the electric oven if I'm cooking pizza.
Colin Bignell
It could be an adaptation of the typical Italian design where there is a reasonably sized chamber and a wood fire built to one side.
The whole thing heats up as you say, but the fire is left in place and wood added. The smoke is driven upwards so does not overly flavour the pizza. These are great if used with thin and simple pizzas made from fresh ingredients - not so much for supermarket thick ones....
.andy
To email, substitute .nospam with .gl
old-fashioned
The barbeque fire is next to the oven, so it could be heated by that. That certainly would make more sense, as there does not seem to be any way for smoke to escape from the oven if the fire is lit inside it. As I say, I've never used it nor am I likely to. Barbeques are not my favourite way of eating.
Colin Bignell
Its in the one I'm at while the neighbours are keeping an eye on the other one :-)
Colin Bignell
Yes, and no.
I learnt my barbecuing inAfrica, weher anything goes.
The one I have now - and SWMBO thionks its ugly and needs dismantling - is simply conctere blocks oilel on top of one another with teh oidd air gap. At about 3 courses hogh, a piece of industrail expaneded steel flooring is laid on top, and two courses of bricks dry laid over that with another layer of mesh on top. A couple of bricks hold it down.
It tends to burn small logs rather than charcoal, for extra flavour. Its often too hot to cook - needs throttling :)
Oh, the combustible material goes on the lower mesh, and the burgers and bananas on the top layer.
.
I'd lash out on a nice portable one - static ones tend to become rather unsightly, and if you find that for some reason they're in the wrong p[lace, you've had it.
I shouldn't think there would be problems, but it might be a good idea to use a lining tray - maybe more practical, too.
J.B.
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