new guy / new project

[bighogdaddy]

Hi my name is Chris and I am  new to smoke houses. I have an idea and would appreciate some input, it is an old store cooler (single door) that I want to convert with with the smoke generator. Do I need a separate heating element or will the heat from the smoke be enough? Let me give you some background: My kids are in 4H and they raise animals and we had 2 hogs we just processed ourselves and we want to smoke our own sausage and stuff.

[Keymaster]

You will need a second heat source that needs to be controlled by a thermostat. You may also want to install a small fan. you need to make sure your heat element does not have grease drip on it and start a grease fire. There will be more people that will come along with all the links you will need to find the parts needed. good luck on your project and welcome to the forum

[beefmann]

here is my set up with a 900 watt heater and blower, depending on the size of the store cooler you may want to increase the  size of the heater and the  cfm of the  blower

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=17329.0

also add in a timer controller

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=17304.0

this should give you  some idea of what to do and help