What is the best calculator to use for a reverse flow build

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I'm on vacation atm but will post some pictures later this week.

When I get back I need to get material for the food racks. What is recommended? I suppose something made of stainless steel? Any other advice is appreciated. :)
 
My father in law got this piece so I could check it out and see if I can make the food shelves out of this material. I have a feeling it does not have enough surface area for the meat to rest on...what do you guys think?

 
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While I was on vacation I had 'my guy' work on my smoker. The only mistake he made was by making the wrong direction cut on the bottom of the stack. It was suppose to be cut the other direction so that the smoke would be guided into the pipe...does this make sense?

Should I just leave it as is and test it out or is there any adjustment I should make right now? Just make the bottom end of the pipe leveled for example?

Thanks!

*I can not seem to add an image from my mobile device. Will add a picture when I'm on my laptop later.
 
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Now I am on my laptop and don't have my phone nearby...

Anyway, check this out. So the red pipe is how I have it now. I do have 2 decent size holes in the front of the pipe (the side facing the CC).

 
How in the "F" did you come up with that ???      Sorry, just had to do it...    Turn it around and weld it  in where ever it fits for you.....
 
I am not sure what he was thinking. Made me sad to find out. But oh well...trying not to look back and come up with a solution.
 
Hi Dave,

My first thought when I saw it like this...I was really bummed out. But then I thought the same thing you did. And if a leveled pipe works, then this should work too. I don't really see how it would be worse than a leveled pipe. 

And if it doesn't work well enough (smoke not being able to escape fast enough), I could make some extra holes in the pipe and see if that fixes it. But first I will try it out like this.


PS: Food shelf 2 is very close to food shelf 1. I did this because I had limited space to work with. It's a skinny tank. I would rather have my ribs on shelf 1 (lower temps) and the larger pieces on top on shelf 2

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The smoker is pretty much ready to go. Still Going to wire wheel the outside to make it look neat. Someday in the future I will paint it black.

The air inlets are a little different than most smokers, but they do the job.

The temp near the exhaust pipe is 10-15F hotter than elsewhere, so not too bad. Might make another hole for smoke to escape though.

Overal really happy with my first smoker. Within 45 minutes it was up to 220F, then the FB door got stuck and I quit the test session. Will do another one soon. I'm really excited to see how hot I can make my new smoker since my previous RF flow smoker I couldn't get hotter than 275F. 

Dave, thank you very much for your help!





 
I did a dry test run today and had trouble getting my smoker temp any higher then 250F. The doors do leak a little bit of smoke but I doubt this is the biggest reason why I am not getting the temp any higher. What should I be looking at first?
 
1 st. how big was the fire.....  That smoker has a lot of thermal mass that takes a lot of BTU's to get warm.....
 
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I have not read up on how much wood people use to get their larger sized smokers hot, so I can see how that could be the reason why.

I used a base of lid charcoal, then 5 decent sized logs. I assumed this much wood would have been sufficient but I guess it takes a little more than what I have used.

What I really like about the smoker is the fact that the fire gets big so much faster than in my small RF smoker. The huge air inlets and huge FB are great. I can close the FB door even when I am starting the fire, plenty of fresh air getting into the FB. The smoker gets up to 250F within an hour.
 
Between air leaks and a fire that may have been too small, there could be your problem until other problems are found...
 
Will fix the doors this week and will do another try.

How much wood is generally needed to get a 250 or 500 gallon smoker up to 300F....so I have an idea what is common.
 
It takes my smoker about 30 - 45 minutes to get to 300f from lighting the kindling wood using three oak splits and both vents wide open.

My smoker looks a bit smaller than yours....... the door openings are 25" wide. 28" O.D. tank.  4'-7" long not including elliptical heads.

 
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