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Turned out to be a great looking pit. Very well done! For me, the calculators stop working when you can’t use splits in the firebox. A 14x20 FB can still work, because you can put 16” splits in sideways, and still have the log grate low enough on the FB. The calculators quit working for me going in ...

Did you mistype Your CC volume?
Wile there are few absolutes in pit building, your numbers for CC and FB don’t look like numbers that a calculator would provide.

I have some pictures on my old laptop. If I can find the laptop, I’ll share the pics and what specs I can recall. I used Lump for a while, but briquettes Burn utterly consistently, so eventually they won out. I never tried running only wood, but I would have sacrificed the consistent burn rate if I ...

I built an insulated reverse flow cabinet smoker for my food truck a few years ago, and used a charcoal basket with one fair-sized split surrounded by charcoal on three sides to make kind of a consumable minion style maze, and I had virtually zero fire tending to do. Kept an eye on the temp, and occ...

Those are the exact questions I plan to ask when I make my trip to visit Smitty’s. They are a couple of hundred miles from me, but I’m going mostly out of curiosity. I am also interested in how they handle the exhaust(s), since the have multiple pits in the same space. Someone suggested they might h...

Here is an example of what I mean by no rules I called Smitty’s BBQ just to verify, the fire is outside the cooking chamber. Of course, it is protected from the elements like wind and rain. Just an interesting way to think outside the (fire)box 🤣 https://www.google.com/search?q=smitty%27s+bbq+brick+...

There a few decent videos of cinder block smokers. Many of them have the fire in the pit, but a few have an external source of heat.
There are few if any hard and fast rules.

I have been thinking about the same thing. The pipe offset smokers that are popular here were created out of necessity, or maybe ingenuity. Some clever pipe fitter in the oil fields decided he wanted something that emulated the brick smoker they had back home, that used indirect heat via an outside ...

Tinspark, well said.
Thanks!

Just some off the cuff ideas: I would make that bottom 25% the fire zone, with a loose plate sitting on a couple of rails at the 7 1/2” mark. I would make the plate 14x13, and start with 1” space all around. If you leave the exhaust where it is, you might want to slide the plate back a bit, because ...

Thanks, Dirtytires.
You are right.
I tend to price things stupidly low, while watching others price their stuff stupidly high, and getting what they ask.
I guess there is truth in the notion that if we don’t value our time and years of experience, others won’t either.

I think if I were unsure of what the throat opening should be, I would err on the side of going larger. A too-small throat could cause a flow problem, restricting the flow to a point that the cooking chamber is unable to attain the desired temp. A larger than necessary throat would allow plenty of f...

I have an acquaintance who has a 500 gal tank, a 250, and a trailer. He will furnish all of the steel for the project. What is the $$ value of the labor involved in building a direct-flow smoker with 1/2 of the 250 for a firebox, mounted on a trailer? He is having it built to sell. I am old and slow...

On my last build, I had a similar issue.
I went a little “out of the Box” (sorry), and used 20” length so I can use longer splits, 17 height for a tiny bit of distance between the coal bed and cooking chamber, but made it a bit narrower, and it works like a champ.

I think If I could have only one smoker (ugh), I would use the design that would meet my needs best. If I were expecting a lot of cooking of say, all brisket, where I may have briskets filling it up from end to end, the reverse flow would probably give me the most even temps along the grate, and les...

I also don't have any experience with that method of fire management but both of your theories probably have something to do with the way it runs. I remember several years ago there was a member (Solo Que) who had pit built for him, I believe it was a 500 gallon offset. It had large intakes cut in ...

Are you cooking with 1,000 gallon smokers like he is? The pics I saw of his new backyard model had his name cut out in the firebox door and also had vents. Not sure if that's the one he's selling, I don't see any way to manage that vent. When I first started I used to leave the door open like he do...

I had a vertical smoker with a fire basket about 22” square, and I would lay a 20” split in it, with charcoal surrounding it on three sides, light one end of the “U”, and allow the fire to work it’s way around the hardwood split, consuming it as it went, and always had a very predictable fire, with ...

Concerning Direct Flow (standard offset) smoker designs, and airflow... I have built a number of smokers, and have my preferred methods, but am still always reading others’ ideas and preferences, because it’s just hard to know EVERYTHING about pit design and smoking processes. 😊 The question I have ...

hogaboomer wrote: ↑

July 18th, 2020, 6:31 am

You're overthinking things. Basically, it comes down to this:

Do you want beef juice flavor on your pork, or pork juice flavor on your beef?

Some people don’t eat pork, so if I were having guests, I’d make sure no pork dripped on the beef, but other than that, I don’t think I’d worry.

Some guys have anticipated that there would be spring back in the pipe after the door is cut. After all , they actually start with a flat sheet and roll form it and seam weld it together under several tons of pressure. . A remedy, I saw a guy do on YouTube once was to split the pipe 48" longways. T...

Are you thinking offset, or fire basket at one end with a partition to block the direct heat?

I like it Kinda flies in the face of conventional wisdom, with regard to firebox to cook chamber to smokestack dimensions. Many of us seem to overthink those, and feel trapped by them. Would you care to share the dimensions of the components of your smoker? The results prove that the design works we...

How long is the firewood you want to use?
A 125 gallon tank would require something in the neighborhood of a 32” piece of 20” pipe.

Why do my outbound PMs get stuck in my outbox, never moving to “sent”.