BBQ Pit Plans

So after several months of research which included countless nights reading blogs and forums, and talking with people about what they liked and didn't like about their smoke pits, I've finally finished the CAD plans for my pit.

For a few different reasons, and I will get into them, I've decided to go with a box design instead of a cylinder/tank design.  First off, I don't know if it was just me, but I couldn't seem to find a tank with the dimensions and wall thickness I was looking for on Craigslist or Kijiji.  I'm sure if I would have waited I would have eventually stumbled upon one, but this second reason is the one that cemented my decision.

It's not that I have a small back yard, but most of my back yard is taken up by the pool, kids toys, deck, etc... so space is a little bit of a concern.  Now most of the tank designs I've seen have one large tray, naturally in the middle where the tank is its widest, which is my opinion leaves a lot of wasted space inside.  Some have no doubt realized this and cut their tanks in half to add a foot or 2 of metal to make it elliptical and taller, which adds a multitude of complexity.  And even after all of that expanding is done, then you still have all the weird round surfaces to hook up the firebox and chimney too.. NO THANKS!

I've purchased a couple of different off the shelf smokers in the past, and both had design features that I didn't like.  My first smoker was (and still is) a horizontal offset smoker.  It continues to be a decent smoker if used properly, and in fact I'll be smoking some chickens tomorrow in it.  The 2 major problems with this unit is that the walls are really thin sheet metal, which makes the temperature hard to sustain, and it's not a reverse flow horizontal offset, which means the heat from the firebox enters the cook chamber directly and it tends to dry the meat if not watched and rotated and flipped and basted and then rotated again!  So lesson learned.. Reverse flow = good!

My second purchased smoker WAS a vertical water smoker.  It's a pretty funny story which involved copious amounts alcohol, some good friends, and a flaming vertical water smoker.  Luckily we were able to pull the brisket and pulled pork quickly from the inferno and it still turned out pretty amazing.  It turns out, the water pan in the vertical water smoker needs to be constantly filled with water.  At some point during the night it had all evaporated and then started to fill with fat drippings from the meat.. and when we stoked the fire in the morning... GREASE FIRE!!

Which brings me to my design.  What have I learned?  No curved surfaces, reverse flow, keep the flames away from the food and get the grease quickly moved out of the way.  Ohh ya, and copious amounts of alcohol are awesome with BBQ  :)  So, let me throw up some CAD rendering of the design..

As you can see, it's boxy and full of rack space.  Everything has been spec'd out according to Feldon's BBQ Pit/Smoker Build Calculator http://feldoncentral.com/bbqcalculator.html  It's gonna be one heavy beast!  The firebox is 1/4" plate steel and smoke chamber is 1/8" plate steel.  Got the raw materials all bought and delivered yesterday (all 550lbs) and I'm ready to start cutting pieces tomorrow.