New Stainless Fridge Build - looking for advice

[Duckfoot]

Picked up a large stainless double door commercial fridge for cheap. I am in the process of dismantling and removing the 2.5" of spray foam to replace with Roxul. I am planning to divide the smoker into two sides utilizing a steel partition, one for fish and one for meats, which is where my primary questions start coming into play.

I'm thinking that both sides will each have a element, not sure if I am going to use 110 or 220 yet. Both burners will not be ran at the same time, so I'm hoping I can utilize one PID for controlling temps. Is this possible? I'm thinking I will need an SSR for each element, and a 3 position switch between the PID and the SSRs to select which burner will be powered? I'm fairly new to PIDs, so not sure if this will work?

Not sure what I'm going to do for smoke generation yet, so I'm open to any advice. Would like to get away with one unit as well with a setup to direct which chamber the smoke will go to.

I appreciate any input or advice as I go.

Matt

 

[dward51]

Nice looking stainless cabinet! Looks like the hardest part is done - getting the blow in foam out.

You are basically building a cabinet that houses two separate smokers. So you would need two temp control setups as well. The problem with using a single PID to run a single or even a dual SSR is you only would have one temp input for the PID to determine when to provide power to the SSR and heating element. So let's say for argument you have a couple of butts on one side and and some fish on the other. Not withstanding you would likely be smoking the different meats at different temps in the first place, the mass of meat and how much heat that mass is sucking out of the warm air column in each side of the smoker will be different. So if the temp probe is on the butt side, the fish will likely be way over cooked as the element on that side should not need to run as long/hot as on the butt side as fish is less mass to absorb heat. Opposite for putting the temp probe on the fish side, the butts will be way under cooked. This is a simplification and there are other issues in doing it that way as well.

Short answer is you are building two smokers that just happen to be joined on one side. Treat them like 2 smokers and give each a dedicated control and heating element.

As to 120 vs 240. In a smoker that size I'm in the camp that says more is better. I would consider going 240v and using 2 elements in each smoker. Say two of the 2,000 or 2,500 watt elements with a switch on the power inlet to one of the 2 elements. That gives you the wattage when you need it for a larger meat mass, but lets you dial it back when you don't. Since you are putting in Roxul insulation, there is really no reason you can't do a hot smoke in this cabinet instead of sticking to 200* and lower for sausage and such. If you build it right, you can go full on 450* for poultry if you want. It just depends on your needs and how you design it and intend to use it. If all you want is to make sausage, stick, jerky and cold smoke fish or cheese, there is no reason to put more than a 1,500 watt 120v element in each side. But if you want to hot smoke, you will need more power as that is a large volume of air and it can hold a lot of cold meat.

Smoke source - lots of options. Pellet tubes are common and work well, as does a dedicated smoke generator or even a add on pellet pooper module or even a bradley puck shuffle. You could even go with a pan of chips on top of the element, but I like a smoke source not tied to the main heating element as at lower temps, the amount of smoke from a pan of chips can be small as the element is not on that much in a well insulated cabinet.

Just a few thoughts.....

 

[Duckfoot]

Thanks for the advice so far. I seemed to be fortunate with the foam, it came out pretty easy actually so far. I am not going to do the doors as they are foamed but completely sealed with welds so no vapors could escape.

I like the thought of looking at them as two smokers, just not the cost associated with PID setups for both sides of course. One thing is that I will never use both sides at the same time, so I thought one PID control may be able to be switched to whichever element I choose. I did give thought to the temp probes and thought about doing a switch to select which thermometer(s) are being used. Theoretically, I don't know if this is possible?

However, as you had mentioned it may be best to just treat each side completely separate for simplicity sake.

 

[alaskanyoung]

I just about completed my build tonight and am just now hearing about tearing out the spray foam. Should have reaearched before i got after it.