My Family and I recently purchased a MES 40. Smoked a brisket, 4 butts, Dino Eggs and Brats on it so far and love it. BUT there are always things a person would like to change about anything they get. First we didn't like it sitting on the floor so we built a stand for it. We have had a go at making our own version of Todd's pellet smoker and it works fairly well. We are happy with it.
BUT, living in west TX it gets extremely warm in the late afternoon. Nothing in the smoker and it turned off can easily read over 150 when the sun hits it. We (my wife and brother) decided to move this into our shop/garage/catch all/bike storage U get the idea. (Ignore the meat this was the only pic I had of the stand and our version of the amazn.)
One of the things the entire family will snack on allot is smoked cheese. With the sun hitting the smoker and raising the temps way above anything we could work with, the shop was the best place as it has a/c to it. We put our smoke generator in a $10 grill in which we cut a whole out the top, put a 4" to 3" reducer on top of the whole, ran 3" flex to a 3" elbow to the MES,
We then ran 4" from the top of the exhaust vent to a box fan we have in the attic/crawl space entrance to help vent it into the attic where we have attic fans to pump the smoke to the outside. We are going to install a 4" in-line fan and run our exhaust hose directly to the underside of one of the attic fans to the attic fan doesn't need to be on to exhaust the smoke. With the MES40 having the wonderful remote to monitor temps and everything it works great. BUT what happens when you need to run to the store and just want to LOOK in on it to make sure it is doing ok? We came up with something for this as well.
I got the great idea (well I thought it was great. wife didn't think so) of putting up one of our homes security camera's that we can access through our smart phones. I mean if smoking meat isn't the most valuable thing on our property when we are away I don't know what is. Naturally I am going to say when we are home my wife is the most valuable thing JUST in case she ever reads this.
But it gives an excellent pic of the inside of the chamber and the immediate area around the smoker. After all that moving and thinking it was sometime around 3am so I had to use the old fall back that my wife bought me.
Thx for reading and I hope y'all enjoyed our move from the back porch to the a/c in the shop.
BUT, living in west TX it gets extremely warm in the late afternoon. Nothing in the smoker and it turned off can easily read over 150 when the sun hits it. We (my wife and brother) decided to move this into our shop/garage/catch all/bike storage U get the idea. (Ignore the meat this was the only pic I had of the stand and our version of the amazn.)
One of the things the entire family will snack on allot is smoked cheese. With the sun hitting the smoker and raising the temps way above anything we could work with, the shop was the best place as it has a/c to it. We put our smoke generator in a $10 grill in which we cut a whole out the top, put a 4" to 3" reducer on top of the whole, ran 3" flex to a 3" elbow to the MES,
We then ran 4" from the top of the exhaust vent to a box fan we have in the attic/crawl space entrance to help vent it into the attic where we have attic fans to pump the smoke to the outside. We are going to install a 4" in-line fan and run our exhaust hose directly to the underside of one of the attic fans to the attic fan doesn't need to be on to exhaust the smoke. With the MES40 having the wonderful remote to monitor temps and everything it works great. BUT what happens when you need to run to the store and just want to LOOK in on it to make sure it is doing ok? We came up with something for this as well.
I got the great idea (well I thought it was great. wife didn't think so) of putting up one of our homes security camera's that we can access through our smart phones. I mean if smoking meat isn't the most valuable thing on our property when we are away I don't know what is. Naturally I am going to say when we are home my wife is the most valuable thing JUST in case she ever reads this.
But it gives an excellent pic of the inside of the chamber and the immediate area around the smoker. After all that moving and thinking it was sometime around 3am so I had to use the old fall back that my wife bought me.
Thx for reading and I hope y'all enjoyed our move from the back porch to the a/c in the shop.