Blowing the smoke away..

[txutopian]

Mornin' y'all...  Got the first brisket of 2014 on my unmodded MES30 and we're 3.5 hours in to a 7# trimmed flat.  My only problem is with the smoke, but this isn't what you may think...  The wife has a major issue with the scent of smoke in the house, so I have to either locate the smoker way in the back of the yard (not a good thing to do with a MES and extension cord) or come up with another plan.  So the light bulb went off about 3:00AM as they can do sometimes, and I thought of the Vornado fan in the garage that comes in very handy during our hot Texas summers.  Fortunately we have a covered deck on the second floor of our house, so the smoker is up there with the Vornado on a table next to it blowing up and away over the top of the exhaust vent.  Temp is holding steady at 223-225 so all is good on that front too.

Worked great while laying down the smoke, blew it up out and away to torture the neighbors, no scent in the house, and wife happy, which means everybody in the family happy...  My thought was that maybe this might also be a great way to really improve airflow in the MES, something it usually has issues with.  I noticed that I achieved blue smoke much faster...pretty much by the second handful of chips.  Has anybody else tried blowing a strong fan over the exhaust to pull air/smoke out?  Good/bad experiences?  I'm thinking about keeping it on through the whole smoke...

 

[noboundaries]

Howdy!

Physics strikes again!  Bernoulli's principle: higher velocity equals lower pressure.

The directed air flow design of the Vornado fan, best friggin' fan on the planet IMO, is creating a lower pressure area over the exhaust vent.  Heat inside the MES is expanding the air in an enclosed space, raising the pressure.  Yes, heat rises but the air flow is going to take the quickest path from higher to lower pressure.  The moving air column from the fan over the vent creates an even lower pressure than the ambient air pressure, in effect "pulling" the hotter, higher pressure air through the MES.

TXUtopian, because of your wife you may have just solved an annoying MES issue!  

Vornado fans are pricy but well built.  Wally-world and Target sell a Honeywell knock-off for 1/3 the price.  I have one Vornado I use at the office and three Honeywells I use around the house.