Smoke Stacks

[bbqpigskin]

First of all, this is one sweet site !Thanks for making it available. I am in the process of building my own mobile pit. I have a 6ft piece of 24" diameter steel pipe that I am going to use for a horizontal cooking chamber. The fire box will be made from 1/2" plate. I actually have two areas that are a bit foggy: Is one door better than two? and how big in diameter should the smoke stack(s) be?

I am currently using a Bar-B-Chef horizontal smoker from BBQ Galore. I like the design, and have done some great BBQ,but it is just too small. Yes I have pit envy! I have successfully done butts, briskets, ribs, and even a 20lb ham for Christmas from scratch(brined,smoked and cooked). Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[jt]

Hi Pigskin

Here's a discussion about horizontal and vertical smokers, and there's a link in to another thread about the same thing. http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15815 Also, look at Zilla's link to his photo page to see his gator pit. It seems to me (I've seen several of these but don't have one) that the heavy metal either needs multiple doors or counter-weights to open one big one. Multiple doors will also allow you to only open where you need and therefore not lose as much heat compared to only having one door and losing everything. Although heavy metal will also retain the heat so ...

I'm sure others will chime in here soon.

[Kevin]

Greetings bbqpigskin, 1 door would give you full length access to cook a whole hog, but that would be a heavy door requiring a counter weight. You would also get a huge heat loss opening up that huge door. You could do 2 or 3 doors with a hinged divider between the doors.

[ZILLA]

As I understand it, the general rule is to make the area of the air inlet dampers the same as the Chimney outlet. The exhaust can be bigger than the inlet but should not be the vise versa. I have one 4" sq tube chimney (3-1/3" inside) and an equal amount of circular intake area at the dampers on 24" pipe. You can make the area's bigger but you may end up closing things off a bit before it drafts right. Others may have more exact info on the subject.