Pellets catching on fire in small smoke house

[Forester579]

Hello Everyone

Just looking for a little advice regarding a small smokehouse I built a couple years ago.
I’ve attached a picture so you can get an idea of what the setup looks like.

So I’ve been using a smokin it tray with pellets for the smoke. Heat is provided by a 240v oven element. The problem I’m having occasionally, is the pellets in the tray catch on fire causing the temps in my smokehouse to skyrocket. I’ve ruined at least one batch of Kabanosy due to this issue and a few jerky batches have suffered as well.

It seems to happen more often when I make jerky because I allow more airflow through the smokehouse.

Just wondering if anyone else has run into this issue? If so, what was your fix?

Could it be due to older pellets? Or maybe I can change the smoker set up a little bit to keep this from happening?

Thanks in advance to anyone that chimes in here.

 

[chopsaw]

Did you try lighting the tray away from the heat source .

 

[Forester579]

I light the tray outside the smoke house and then when it is only smouldering I put it inside. It will work as intended for an undeterminable amount of time and then suddenly catch.
I haven’t tried moving the tray any further away from the heat source yet, as that would take some new fabrication.

 

[normanaj]

Another suggestion would be to put the tray outside the smokehouse and do something similar to the "mailbox mod" that many of use with our MES smokers.

These give you the gist of the idea:

 

[sandyut]

Or maybe try the smoke tube Ubolt mod from @normanaj. I would get the pellets off the heat source. Or the mailbox mod above.

 

[BigW.]

I agree, if all the pellets are all lighting at once they are to close to heat source. Mailbox mod would also give you cleaner smoke. Another possible suggestion would be a piece of metal to divert the smoke for even distribution. Without whatever is directly above tray will get more smoke that meats than the sides.

 

[chopsaw]

You can buy the enclosed tray for burning pellets / wood chips . They choke off the air flow to the contents .
Could also use a cast iron skillet with wood chunks . To much surface on pellets to sit it on the heat source in my opinion .

 

[Forester579]

Thanks for the replies guys. Sounds like the consensus is that the pellets are just too close to the heat source. I will make some variation of that u-bolt set up and see how that works. And possibly look into building one of those mailbox mods in the future.

Thanks for the help