What a Pizza Oven Costs to Run

Purchase price gets all the attention. Running cost is what you actually live with, and over a five-year life it can exceed the difference between two ovens you were agonising over.

Here are working figures, and — more usefully — the habits that move them.

Wood consumption

Seasoned hardwood, reaching and holding working temperature:

Dome	To temperature from cold	Per hour holding
90 cm	10–15 kg	3–4 kg
100 cm	15–20 kg	4–5 kg
110 cm	20–25 kg	5–6 kg
120 cm	25–35 kg	6–8 kg

A 100 cm oven running a five-hour dinner service from cold uses roughly 35–45 kg a day. Over a six-day week, somewhere near 250 kg.

LPG consumption

Oven	Burner	Per hour holding
100 cm gas	18 kW	1.2–1.5 kg
110 cm hybrid (on gas)	20 kW	1.4–1.7 kg
120 cm gas	24 kW	1.8–2.2 kg

A 100 cm gas oven over a twelve-hour trading day uses roughly 15–18 kg — around a 50 kg cylinder every three days. At that rate bulk supply is usually more economical than cylinders, and worth pricing before you commit to a cylinder bank.

The habits that actually move the number

Letting the oven go cold. The single biggest lever. Reaching temperature from cold costs three to four times what holding costs per hour. A seven-day kitchen that keeps the dome warm overnight uses dramatically less fuel than one firing from cold each morning. This is also why insulation quality shows up directly on your fuel bill.

Wet or unseasoned wood. Roughly doubles consumption, because you are boiling water before you get heat. It also sooties the dome and produces creosote in the flue. See choosing firewood in Kenya.

Leaving the mouth open. An oven with the door off between bakes bleeds heat continuously. During service that is unavoidable; between services it is waste.

Overshooting temperature. Running at 500 °C when 450 would do costs fuel and burns bases. Get an infrared thermometer and stop guessing — see floor versus dome temperature.

Oversizing. A 120 cm dome bought for a 100 cm workload burns the difference every day for the life of the oven. This is the running-cost consequence of a purchasing mistake.

Maintenance costs people forget

• Flue sweeping — annually for most, twice yearly for a seven-day wood operation. Non-negotiable on wood: creosote is a fire risk.
• Burner service — annually on gas, including the flame-failure test and the certification your insurer wants.
• Hearth tiles — a handful replaced every few years in commercial service. Cheap if the floor was laid dry, expensive if it was mortared.
• Relining — every several years in heavy commercial use. A fraction of a replacement, and covered in cracks, spalling and relining.

Budgeting a modest annual figure for servicing is far cheaper than the trading days lost when an unserviced oven stops mid-week.

Getting more out of the same fire

The economics improve considerably if you use the whole heat curve rather than only the top of it. Pizza uses 450–500 °C for a couple of hours. Below that sits roasting, then bread, then slow cooking and drying — all of it on heat you have already paid for.

Bakeries that plan the day around the falling curve get three distinct uses from one firing. Restaurants that run pizza service and then put roasts in overnight are doing the same thing. It is the closest thing to free capacity a brick oven offers, and our bakery and multi-purpose builds are designed around it.

Wood or gas on cost alone?

For a seven-day operation holding temperature, wood usually works out cheaper per trading hour. For a site firing from cold a few times a week, gas often does, because you are not paying the heat-up penalty repeatedly.

But the gap is rarely decisive on its own. Staffing, extraction, and what your menu needs matter more — which is the argument in wood-fired or gas.

The honest summary

A well-insulated 100 cm oven, run by someone who keeps it warm, burns dry wood, and does not overshoot temperature, costs meaningfully less to operate than the same oven run carelessly. The variance between two identical ovens in two kitchens is larger than the variance between wood and gas.

Which means the cheapest oven to run is a well-built one, operated by someone who was shown how. Both are things you buy at the start.

A worked month

Take a 100 cm wood-fired oven in a six-day pizzeria, firing from a warm dome each morning and trading a five-hour dinner service.

• Fuel: roughly 35–45 kg of seasoned hardwood a day, so around 250 kg a week and a tonne a month.
• Flue sweeping: twice a year for this duty cycle, amortised across the year.
• Hearth tiles: a handful every few years — negligible monthly, and only cheap because the floor was laid dry.
• Annual inspection: one visit, covering refractory, flue and insulation.

The same oven run carelessly — allowed to go cold every night, burning wood at 30% moisture, held at 500 °C when 450 would do — can consume half again as much fuel for identical output. That gap is larger than the difference between most wood and gas installations.

Where the money actually leaks

Heating masonry you are not cooking on. An oven without a calcium silicate base board loses heat downward into the stand at every firing. Invisible, permanent, and one of the reasons a cheap build costs more over its life.

Wet insulation. A failed rain cap or porous render saturates rockwool, which does not recover. The symptom is an oven that used to be warm the next morning and now is not, and the fuel penalty is substantial.

The open mouth. During service it is unavoidable. Between services, an oven left open bleeds heat continuously — closing the door at shutdown is the cheapest saving available.

Buying wood badly. Wood bought wet and burned within a month costs the same per kilogram and delivers far less heat. Storage that lets you buy ahead and season properly pays for itself in a season.

Comparing against a deck oven

A commercial electric deck oven has lower installation cost and no fuel logistics, but it draws power continuously and produces a different product. Where the comparison genuinely favours brick is in operations that use the falling heat curve — bread, roasts, slow cooking on heat already paid for.

If you only ever cook pizza between six and ten in the evening, the running-cost argument for brick is weaker than the product argument. Be honest about which one is actually driving the decision.