Little help? Way to hot...

[stunafeesh]

Pardon for noob q:
-Got myself Oklahoma Joe Highland - and I'm running super hot.... It's like I can have veeeeeery little in the burnbox, like a couple tiny splits, and with gates wide open run 250-300. So I close the gates a tad... Nada, go more radical (90%) and see billows of smoke and temp drop (flame has gone out)- I wanna run around 200-220 zone but if I have flame in that box it's like 300... I can't get the damn thing to run low... What do I need to do? I started with Hickory splits (8"x 1" x 2" long -ish) now trying Apple chunks (baseball sized chunks) - does bigger wood run lower?

 

[Chasdev]

250/300 is pretty much in line with what you should see in a run of the mill stickburner.
The only way to run under that is to switch to charcoal (and not very much at that) with mini-sticks added every half-hour or hour.
A mini-split is about 6 to 8 inches long and around 3 inches in diameter.
The wood should be around 14% moisture content as well or it will burn too fast (if under 14%) or too slow (over 25% moisture).
Higher moisture content wood form larger coals (as opposed to turning to ash while it burns) which cause the temps to run hot without the benefit of the smoke burning wood produces.
You already know this, but closing the firebox door is a no-no, the fire needs maximum O2 to burn clean.

 

[smokerjim]

not familiar with your smoker, but i used to use an charbroil offset a lot, as chasdev said i found it hard to run that low using splits, if i really needed to try and run low i used charcoal with some small wood chunks for smoke. i'm sure someone with your style smoker will be around with some tips.

 

[Displaced Texan]

My old Char Broil is basically that size. Splits are just too big for this unit.Using the chunks as you stated is the way to go. It may just be unrealistic to run a pit that size at 200-220 as you said is your goal. I would think 250-275 would be a good goal to run using a chunk or two at a time when you see the temp coming down.