Smoke Backfeed Problems

[Jeff04]

I've just fired up my new semi-homemade smoker with a Bradley Smoke Generator and am having a couple of issues:

1.  Smoke is backfeeding through the unit itself, with very little going into the smoke box.  I assume the cause of this is insufficient ventilation of the smoke box -I have only two 1 1/4" vent holes at the front of the box near the top.  Can anyone tell me how much ventilation I need to get sufficient drafting?  Or if possibly I have other issues?  Do I need to seal the gap (about 1/8") between the SG and the wall of the smoke box?

2.  My heat source is a gas burner, and using a water-filled pan to catch the biscuits quickly creates a steam cabinent, not an ideal way to barbeque!  Is the water tray really necessary?  If so, does anyone have any suggestions for keeping the steam level down?

Thanks for your help,
Jeff

[car54]

Welcome Jeff,

If you are getting steam that means that you are probably running too hot and may have something to do with the smoke back feeding. How close is the burner to the water bowl? The vent wholes seem okay but how big is the smoker?

Brad

[whitetailfan]

I too wonder how close your burner is to the water pan.  Can you move the burner further away without difficulty?

From what I know about the smoke gen, it comes with an adapter to mount onto your cabinet and then the smoke gen should slip onto two knobs to hang in place.  If you have this mounted correctly, I would not mess with it.

Your vents are on the front of the unit - you may want to look at punching a hole in the top of your cabinet.  A production model Bradley has a vent in the top I will try to describe.  Picture about a 4 inch circle.  That circle is a pizza with every second piece missing.  Our vent control is the same size pizza (that rotates) so that you can exactly cover all the missing pieces of the pizza, or match the same design so that all the pizza holes are wide open, or anywhere in between.  Kind of like setting 2 floor drains on top of each other so you can open or block all the holes any amount.

If you cant find anything similar to buy, you could use a tin can lid or round piece of steel and screw down one edge so you can spin it open or closed to control heat and moisture.

Kind of rambled on there, but I hope you get the picture.  Hope that helps, good luck.

ps - yes the water bowl is necessary to extinguish the spent pucks.


<font color="green">whitetailfan</font id="green">
"Nice Rack"
Lethbridge, AB