Just bought a Vulcan Hart deck oven Vo004

[pcuezze]

I’ve been hawking this site for a while now and am looking to open a neighborhood Pizza place. The emphasis will be on Chicago style pan pizza but I would like to develop a faster cooking pizza for a lunch buffet (we have a community college with 6000 students that drive by every day). I’m trying to acquire equipment on the cheap and couldn’t pass this one by.

Here’s the listing from ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320318681850

It’s a 460v 3 phase but it’s a 3 door and the bottom door has a rack. I’m pretty confident it is adequate for a 2400 square foot restaurant if I were only serving the pan pizzas - cooking at 425. I calculate it will hold 15-20 pizzas of varying sizes at one time.

But for a traditional american crust, will I be able to acheive a good result? It looks like the owners put a diamond-patter steel plate on the deck of each bay. I was hoping to replace one of these with a stone. I’ve seen all the posts regarding stones in deck ovens and no it’s not ideal. Is it totally unfeasible? How is the recovery time on a 460v oven like this?

I’m willing to re-list this oven and don’t think it’d be a problem getting my money back out of it locally. But if it’s usable, I got a steal…

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

 

[George_Mills]

HI Pcuezze:

What you have is a baking oven.

You could try putting a stone deck in one right on top of the steel deck. I have never done that on that type of oven but it may be worth a try.

Are you positive about the voltage? I have no record of Vulcan offering that model in that voltage. May have been a custom built unit but I cant envision anyone needing that high of voltage.

Good Luck

George Mills

 

[paul7979]

Your biggest problem with this oven is that you need to have 460volts available to operate it. You’ll generally only find this electrical service in govt buildings or major industrial buildings. Your average retail strip center will not have this electrical service. Because of this, equipment that requires 400 volts to operate usually sells for significantly less than 200 volt equipment.

 

[pcuezze]

Thanks guys. I know it’s a baking oven. But, I’m hoping it will be passable for an American style pizza to supplement the pan baked chicago style. It is definitely 460v. We have 3 phase at the building I’m looking at. I do not know if its 208. I do know that you can step-up 208 3 phase to 460 but don’t know how cost effective that would be. The 460v 3 phase elements should be very efficient and I hope that leads to better recovery time.

Unfortunately, I can’t test it out

I will say that I’ve made some pretty good pies on a stone in my 550 home oven. Don’t know if I can replicate that in this oven though…

My goal is to invest in a deck-style pizza oven with stones, etc. But for now, I’d like to get my doors open with as little capital as is reasonable. I don’t want to be pound-foolish, however…

 

[George_Mills]

Hi Pcuezze:

Pulled out some old Vulcan catalogs Your ovens appear to be very close to the electric pizza ovens Vulcan made. The decks are not quite as high inside for the pizza model and they had 300 to 700 degree thermostats.

They were listed with steel decks and cordierite decks were an option.

The literature does not state if the cordierite decks were placed on the steel decks but I would guess that was the case.

I cannot find any place where they show a 460 volt option but they do show a 480 volt option . Perhaps your units are 480 volt.

George Mills