Upside Down Fire

I'll likely try it next weekend unless someone chimes in here that it burns out of control for cooking purposes and post some pics and times, temps and such.

Results From The Upside Down Fire

Attempted to stack it as close together as possible







On goes the hot charcoal next



About 30 minutes in the fire is going nicely and I have the intake damper choked down a bit.  Nice thin blue smoke going; okay very thin blue smoke but there was plenty in the cooking chamber.  Cooking temperature is holding a solid 230F.



And now the trouble comes.  1 hour in the bottom logs catch fire somehow.



I'm thinking the intake is open more than enough to feed this thing however, the fire quickly consumes all the oxygen in the firebox after spiking out-of-control and my thin blue smoke is not so much anymore.



1 and 1/2 hours in the temps start dropping from the choked-out fire.  Another 15 minutes of my last-pitch adjustments and I decide to pull the rip cord on this mother.  I leave two logs in that are burning the best and return the thin blue smoke and my temps stabilize after about 15 minutes.



Unless I've missed some fundamental concept of the upside down fire here I'm declaring this a FAILURE for the purpose of cooking food.  Oh well, at least I got some good chicken out of it in the end once I rebuilt my fire.



And finally for no practical reason what-so-ever here is a pic of TBS at night under a flash.