I have some bad news if you use black pipe as I did. It sucks, don’t do it! Hunting season is coming and I need to make up some recipes. Our basement fridge died in late spring and I lost a lot of sausage and deer dogs and home grown chickens. My wife took forever figuring which one she wanted and so on and I couldn’t prepare anything.
So I decided I was going to one weekend make Lebanon Bologna snack sticks and use ECA (Encapsulated Citric Acid) this time to add the dry cured type twang to it. So I walk up and check the smokehouse and I have a hole in the pipe. I touch it and it coming apart at the seems.
This is worse than I found, but as soon as I started poking it it got worse. my patch was not going to work, I need a whole pipe.
As I take it out I find the second pipe is rotting from underneath. Back the hardware store for a second pipe.
I tried to remove the heat bypass from the first pipe and everything fell apart. Angle grinder and vice locks to the rescue.
It actually wasn’t that hard to slide the first pipe in the fire box hole farther and insert the second. The hard part was lining them up and fitting them together horizontally with the wood over top while on you back sideways. Many loud curse works “Son of a female dog!”
With the cutting blade on the angle grinder I just cut a simple hole for the heat bypass.
Re attach the heat bypass, wire brush with the angle grinder and repaint.
If you make a smokehouse, use masonry flue or use a stainless flue. Moisture gets through the concrete in the fire box and it just stays moist in there and probably a combination of moisture and lye and the pipes rotten.
Built in 2015 and rotten by 2019. So in 4 years the pipe needed to be replaced. I am going to be replacing the fire box and pipes with masonry flue and making a vaulted fire box with a vulated oven over it maybe next year, hopefully.
So I decided I was going to one weekend make Lebanon Bologna snack sticks and use ECA (Encapsulated Citric Acid) this time to add the dry cured type twang to it. So I walk up and check the smokehouse and I have a hole in the pipe. I touch it and it coming apart at the seems.
This is worse than I found, but as soon as I started poking it it got worse. my patch was not going to work, I need a whole pipe.
As I take it out I find the second pipe is rotting from underneath. Back the hardware store for a second pipe.
I tried to remove the heat bypass from the first pipe and everything fell apart. Angle grinder and vice locks to the rescue.
It actually wasn’t that hard to slide the first pipe in the fire box hole farther and insert the second. The hard part was lining them up and fitting them together horizontally with the wood over top while on you back sideways. Many loud curse works “Son of a female dog!”
With the cutting blade on the angle grinder I just cut a simple hole for the heat bypass.
Re attach the heat bypass, wire brush with the angle grinder and repaint.
If you make a smokehouse, use masonry flue or use a stainless flue. Moisture gets through the concrete in the fire box and it just stays moist in there and probably a combination of moisture and lye and the pipes rotten.
Built in 2015 and rotten by 2019. So in 4 years the pipe needed to be replaced. I am going to be replacing the fire box and pipes with masonry flue and making a vaulted fire box with a vulated oven over it maybe next year, hopefully.
Last edited:
