Fire Brick
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iowa arborist It might help, depending on your smoker. For anyone who doesn’t know what he is referring to is the wave-like heat pattern of an electric smoker. If you set your electric smoker to 150° it will normally heat it up to about 165 then shut off then not kick on again until it is around 140, then it will heta it back up to 165 and so on and so on. This, obviously can create a little problem though not too much. The bricks would hold heat but I think that might just mean your smoker is going to keep its heating element off more.
Obviously this depends on your smoker and how it works, some do the on/off cycle on timers. If you do this try to place the bricks farther away from the thermosensor and let us know how it works!
Jonathon my thinking was along the lines of my garage is forced air heat and takes awhile to reheat the air after opening the doors but my shop is in floor heat and with all that concrete warm it seems to be back up to temp extremely quickly after opening a door.
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iowa arborist Then yes, it would absolutely help with bringing it back up to temperature from the door opening as it will have something in there radiating heat directly into the enclosed space. Also, it sounds like your controller will take care of my only concern! Also, for anyone without a way to control your system lik you can, I am not saying this isn’t a good idea, I think it definitely could keep your smoker in the goldilocks zone for a longer time! In fact, I am going to buy some firebricks and do some testing on with my PK-100 and see if it helps level it out. Won’t be until the new year but i’ll let everyone know!
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iowa arborist Then yes, it would absolutely help with bringing it back up to temperature from the door opening as it will have something in there radiating heat directly into the enclosed space. Also, it sounds like your controller will take care of my only concern! Also, for anyone without a way to control your system lik you can, I am not saying this isn’t a good idea, I think it definitely could keep your smoker in the goldilocks zone for a longer time! In fact, I am going to buy some firebricks and do some testing on with my PK-100 and see if it helps level it out. Won’t be until the new year but i’ll let everyone know!
Jonathon awesome I’ll be keeping an eye out for your results!
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iowa arborist Okay, I went and bought some and did this testing the results were…confusing to say the least! I am attaching a screenshot but to say I am shocked is an understatement. The first 4 peeks were from before we added the bricks, then when we added the bricks the wave increase! I would also argue that the waves angle increased, not decreased! I added 12 bricks to the smoker too, so it wasn’t an issue of too few bricks.
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iowa arborist Okay, I went and bought some and did this testing the results were…confusing to say the least! I am attaching a screenshot but to say I am shocked is an understatement. The first 4 peeks were from before we added the bricks, then when we added the bricks the wave increase! I would also argue that the waves angle increased, not decreased! I added 12 bricks to the smoker too, so it wasn’t an issue of too few bricks.
Jonathon Do you know where the built-in temperature probe is located on the PK 100? It would seem that you could get those results if the fire bricks were placed close enough to the built-in probe such that the steadier temperature of the bricks could “fool” the thermostat.
I’m just speculating, but that is one way I would try to reproduce those results (except that I don’t know where the built-in probe is).
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Okay, found the thermal sensor and as it turns out it was right around where I put the bricks, so test#2 starts now with the bricks all the way down on the grease tray.
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Jonathon Where is the sensor? It’s good know that it’s not near the heating element (as that would be a bigger problem), but I also want to place my probe away from both the heating element and the native sensor.
Thanks!
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With the bricks at the bottom they don’t appear to be as steep but it wasn’t the flattening of the curve I was hoping for.
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If I am reading your graph right it looks like you are getting approximately 6 deg of swing, your first run looks to be approx. 20 or more
What am I getting wrong? -
TexLaw The sensor is on the back wall about 3/4th to 4/5th of the way up, right around where the second rack would go.
Jonathon Thanks!
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Woo-hoo! I did something right! Maybe all those years of skoolin’ will finally pay off!
That is encouraging to see how much difference the fire bricks made. Just as aside (and with no graph to back it up), I noticed a significant difference when my water pan dried out, but nothing nearly as drastic.
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TexLaw the water pan would slow down the cook but it wouldn’t necessarily let the measured temperature. By having more moisture in the air the thermal processing will go faster as the evaporation energy coming off of the meat will be lessened.
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