I'm not sure about the whole thing really, but it seems to me that you maybe trying to reach an unrealistic time frame for loading / feeding the fire. I could be that you will have to feed it a small amount of fuel every half hour to keep the temp you are trying to maintain. I say that based on the data, and taking into account that being the style cooker you have it isn't losing any heat because it is all going up. I'm thinking that there could be worse things than having to feed smaller amounts more often. You could have a second fire burning and just take away coals from it to add to your cooker and never have an over smoke environment.
jm2cw
Current Smokers: Backyard RF Offset and Hybrid RF Offset trailer rig with Cowboy cooker and fish fryer, always room for more........
If you take this design and oversize the FB with exagorated height could you go with charcoal in a more vertical basket design and get quite an extended burn? Just curious, I'm tinkering with a patio center FB design and that is one of my goals.
If it can't be smoked .... try frying it. It that don't work, it's probably best just left alone
sure, that is one reason to oversize the FB on a smaller cooker. If you picture it like water displacement.... you need a certain volume of air in order to move enough to heat the smoker and promote complete combustion, therfore if you plan to use a large amount of charcoal, compensating for the loss in volume is a good idea...
i am very happy with the way this turned out. i may eventually get rid of the rain hats and come up with a more precise baffle set up. it works for now.
under perfect conditions(over cast day with no wind), i can set the stack and air inlet, have the cc at about 250 degrees and get an hour out of the fire. however after a few cooks i realized it doesn't work out the way too often. once the sun comes out or the wind changes, my temps shoot up. so i have to go out and check on the weather anyways, and most likely adjust something. so the burn time becomes irrelevant. oh well. I usually have something to do in the garage so i can keep an eye on it.
Ive been filling the firebox maybe 1/2 to just under 3/4 full.
60 gallon tank and 26 pound pig. if i had thought of this when i was building/planning , i would have made the door bigger.
cant remember what my reason was , but i had one at the time, to make the door smaller than the cook surface.
i could cram a lot more pig in there if i got rid of the upper shelf. maybe some sort of bolt on set up to make room for bigger things. use the same spacers from the hinges. weld nuts to the angle iron.... have to see if this mini pig is worth the effort.
also, it is 11 degrees out side.haven't fired it up in these temps yet. wonder how it will run today
Mofomatic what did you do about a grease drain im starting a centerfeed build and im trying to figure out the best way to add a grease drain to the baffle plate