Adding a vent ideas

[steves8860]

This is my smoker.
I have an ammo box that I put a tube with chips or pellets in. I have then vent all the way open for these shots.

Small "vent" hole in the back. I think it was "designed" to let the smoke out around the door. Less expensive to make.

Smoke comes out around the door might not be that big of a deal, but I'm thinking if I seal the door and put a vent or chimney on it I will have a more consistent or flexible smoker.

I think a chimney would be better and possibly more simple as well. Are there ideas how to get parts and install either a chimney or backside vents that are adjustable?

One suggestion given to me was put some holes in the back, slide in some copper pipes, and use foil balls to open/occlude the pipes.

 

[Lonzinomaker]

I needed some more airflow on a Big Chief smoker. Put a 4 in pinwheel louver (from Char Broil parts site) on top and drilled some 3/4 in holes below it. Got plenty of airflow now and best of all, can close it down.

 

[bill1]

Make sure what you're doing can be reversed to your "visual satisfaction"...

Yes making vents bigger will burn your chips/pellets faster and you will produce more smoke.
But it will be running through your cooker faster as well. The amount of smoke in your smoker at any one time will not be appreciably different so any increase in smoking will be negligible and only because the smoke flavor molecules are being thrown at your meat a little faster and harder.

But the really bad news is that the increased flow is going to flush the heat out of your cooker faster too. Unless you've modified that electric smoker to run on 240V with a lot larger element, you're probably not going to have enough power to reach the temperatures you'd like. You'd have to greatly increase the amount of wood you're burning in that ammo box and you'd be approaching the physics of an offset smoker.

In addition to the added convective flow of heat out of your smoker due to the higher flow, you'll also increase the conductive loss of heat through the walls because you will have violated, to a significantly greater degree, the amount of insulation between inner and outer walls.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by consistency, but if you're wanting to further improve the ability to hold a set temperature, this is NOT the way to do it.

That looks like some lovely smoke you've got coming from that small hole. If that stays pretty consistent throughout your cook, I'd say you're pretty close to perfection already.

Not all improvements are.

 

[steves8860]

Make sure what you're doing can be reversed to your "visual satisfaction"...

Yes making vents bigger will burn your chips/pellets faster and you will produce more smoke.
But it will be running through your cooker faster as well. The amount of smoke in your smoker at any one time will not be appreciably different so any increase in smoking will be negligible and only because the smoke flavor molecules are being thrown at your meat a little faster and harder.

But the really bad news is that the increased flow is going to flush the heat out of your cooker faster too. Unless you've modified that electric smoker to run on 240V with a lot larger element, you're probably not going to have enough power to reach the temperatures you'd like. You'd have to greatly increase the amount of wood you're burning in that ammo box and you'd be approaching the physics of an offset smoker.

In addition to the added convective flow of heat out of your smoker due to the higher flow, you'll also increase the conductive loss of heat through the walls because you will have violated, to a significantly greater degree, the amount of insulation between inner and outer walls.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by consistency, but if you're wanting to further improve the ability to hold a set temperature, this is NOT the way to do it.

That looks like some lovely smoke you've got coming from that small hole. If that stays pretty consistent throughout your cook, I'd say you're pretty close to perfection already.

Not all improvements are.

I appreciate your insight.
I'm a novice looking through lots of ideas.

I figure
1. Seal the door to have air moving more directionally through the ammo box and also to hold heat better. Total flow would decrease but...

2. Install a vent to make up for the loss of flow drawing across my tube in the ammo box.

Maybe the sealing of the doors will save heat and the vent will lose heat. But it would be more of a deliberate direction of air flow from the bottom to the top instead of just seeping through the doors.

It's not a huge smoker so maybe it really doesn't matter though.