New Smokehouse Build Questions

[mpatty]

I found this forum while looking for smokehouse plans and have learned tons of information by searching around. Thank you for all the information that I have already been able to get from this site.

I am planning on a smokehouse with offset firebox, CMU foundation and Cedar house. I have two questions.

I have plenty of Eastern Red Cedar that I have the opportunity to mill and can use as siding. I have seen that smoking with eastern red cedar is a bad idea, would building the house out of eastern red cedar be a bad idea or would seasoning with a few burns fix this? I am hoping to cold, warm and hot smoke with this smokehouse.

I have seen the heat bypass and airflow image. I have not seen where anyone has placed a heat bypass directly over the firebox. I plan on using clay chimney flues instead of metal pipe to avoid the eventual rust/rot/replacement so I am stuck on ideas of how to incorporate the bypass directly over the firebox or in the clay flue.

 

[mpatty]

After reading more on eastern red cedar, I think I am going to pass as using it for the smokehouse. I have found a good white oak candidate that may be used for this and additional lumber saved for future woodworking projects (I have built some furniture/doors etc as a hobby).

 

[archeryrob]

I am going to rebuild my fire box to be two vaulted ovens. See this thread for my ideas. The bottom vault would be for the smokehouse fire and for where to push coal for the top oven. The top is the oven and I can build a fire in the oven and leave it there or push it to the bottom to keep it going and indirect fire and smoke from below.

I would have a 1/4" steel plate to act as the damper to the top when using the smoke house and can use it as a heat bypass with push pull rod. I have not figured a good way to damper tot he smokehouse except maybe a metal plate in the bottom vaulted oven.

Maybe you'll come up with something.