Help! Vertical insulated RF

[Evans Custom]

Hello all. I could use some advice before I get to the point of no return. Been building a vertical RF insulted for a few years now LOL! It’s cursed. Long story.
Cook chamber up top. Firebox below. With the heat coming up both side false walls. My concern is the false walls are too small. I want it to flow good. It will run off a controller. Firebox is all 1/4” and 2” waterpan is as well. The rest is all 1/8” and will be 2” insulated. I plugged the numbers into the calculator. Says I need a 67.2” squared throat. So here’s my numbers. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cook chamber-
38” Tall including 2” water pan.
26” Wide including 1”false wall on each side.
24” Deep

Firebox-
12 1/2” Tall
28” Wide
24” Deep

False walls- both sides
24” Deep
35” Tall. Stops 3” short of top of CC
1” actually 1 1/8” false wall

4” square stack from near bottom center out and up!
2” ball valve inlet with a guru or the like.
So should I be at 1 1/2”? 2” false wall? Only tacked In. Thanks

[Evans Custom]

I need to finish this thing so I can start my Mack build.

[dacolson]

I’m not quite sure how the sizer applies to a vertical RF but if it does, then your current throat area is 1.125 x 24 x 2 walls = 54 in2. You should make it 1.4” x 24” x 2 walls = 67.2. Round up to 1.5” and 72” area.
That said, I have no idea how a vertical RF runs in relation to the draw calculators for standard/RF offset smokers.


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[tinspark]

Not sure if this applies to yours, but it looks like it might. The calculator applies to the horizontal, but he gives a good rule of thumb here that may help.. Big T touched on something similar a little while ago. Search up this post and look for BigT..
Hopefully it helps
https://smokerbuilder.com/forums/viewto ... 14#p116414

[dacolson]

Evans Custom, I’ve been thinking about your build and have some thoughts. First, I just want to make sure I understand your build correctly. To me, it sounds like you have rectangular cabinet roughly 62ish inches tall, 26 inches wide and 24 inches deep. You have an insulated firebox sitting in the bottom with a 2” water pan sitting on top of it. You have a 1 1/8” x 24” throat on the right and left sides of the firebox running front to back facing upwards. You have a baffle plate - or false wall - running up each side on the left and right sides of the cook chamber. Hot air and smoke go up your false walls into the cook chamber and the draw sucks the smoke and heat down over your meat into the chimney which is at the bottom back of the CC. Do I have it right? If so, draft is super important b/c you are fighting the rising heat to bring it back down across your cooking racks.
My bet is you will get a lot of help in the draft just because the rising hot air from your FB running up your false walls will naturally force air in the CC down and out your stack continually as your FB runs. This is very similar to how a rocket mass heater works. These systems are insanely efficient and don’t need a very big fire to produce a lot of heat and draft. You might do a test burn as it is right now to see how well it draws. I bet you’ll be fine where you have it set now.
If you have any photos or drawings, I’d love to see them.

[Evans Custom]

Dacolson. Pretty much. The dimensions I gave are internal. The actual overall/outside dimension are
54 1/2” Tall. 32”Wide. 28” Deep. Frame is 2” square tube. I’ll find a pic. I appreciate the info fellas

[Evans Custom]

[Evans Custom]

It’s a little further along than these pics. Stands 60” Tall on the casters. Just came up with my own dimensions and and let the sparks fly! Then I find smokerbuilder and realize there is more to it.some really good info. Flow. Size and placement ect. Already realizing some rookie mistakes lol! I just rather have it right the first time. Again, I really appreciate the information all. Thanks

[dacolson]

Dacolson. Pretty much. The dimensions I gave are internal. The actual overall/outside dimension are
54 1/2” Tall. 32”Wide. 28” Deep. Frame is 2” square tube. I’ll find a pic. I appreciate the info fellas

Cool. I think the design is interesting and should work. You’re forcing smoke to travel over the meat and creating a lot of heat mass across the water pan and the false walls. Again, I have no experience w a cooker running like this so my approach would be to test as much as possible before committing to the final final, or make it adjustable.
To that point, I think if you were to increase the gap to create more are behind the false walls - say to 1.5 or 2” - you could fine tune the draw by adjusting the size of the opening at the top of your false walls. Put a sliding plate to shrink or grow the opening on either side. That will be your air restriction point and make it easy to increase or decrease draw. Should be pretty simple to mock up the plate/rail guides/pins to adjust the opening.
Just my thoughts ... I’m super interested in how this proceeds.


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[Evans Custom]

Yeah, I’m going to finish it leaving the false walls only tacked in and do a test run to be safe I guess. As is I’m at 80% of recommended throat. But as mentioned that’s for a horizontal.

[Big T]

I've never built a vertical RF but I have built a few vertical cookers and the throat on a vertical is much smaller than an offset. I think that 80% of an offset throat will be sufficient for a vertical. There have been a few of these built on the forum and from what I've read the biggest obstacle to overcome is establishing the draft. If you're using a controller it might not be that big of a deal. Do you plan on making an automatic watering system for it? The reason I ask is because anytime I've ever had a cooker with a water pan directly above the FB I've always battled huge temp swings because of the water boiling off. It seemed like every time I got it dialed in the water level would drop and the temp would rise, I'd add more water and start the process over again. There's nothing wrong with using water as heatsink, it just takes some patience until you figure it out.

[tinspark]

I've never built a vertical RF but I have built a few vertical cookers and the throat on a vertical is much smaller than an offset. I think that 80% of an offset throat will be sufficient for a vertical. There have been a few of these built on the forum and from what I've read the biggest obstacle to overcome is establishing the draft. If you're using a controller it might not be that big of a deal. Do you plan on making an automatic watering system for it? The reason I ask is because anytime I've ever had a cooker with a water pan directly above the FB I've always battled huge temp swings because of the water boiling off. It seemed like every time I got it dialed in the water level would drop and the temp would rise, I'd add more water and start the process over again. There's nothing wrong with using water as heatsink, it just takes some patience until you figure it out.

Question for Big T or anyone who has seen an auto watering system:
Just curious about the auto watering system.. Does it run off of a brass float and valve, similar to an evap cooler?
I found one in the attached video, but it seems a little wonky the way it was put together. Concept may be good, but different parts might be in order..
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=au ... &FORM=VIRE

[Evans Custom]

Big T. My plan was to cook with water and without.
Also a question on draft. Will it help to go bigger on the stack length to help with draft? Will it pull harder?

[Dirtytires]

An automatic filler can be pretty simple. Simply put a small container (at about the same level as your internal one) on the outside of the smoker and run a pipe between it and the internal. The water level will equalize between the two so you will be able to see what your level is and fill up based on the outside container.

And to help avoid temp swings like Big T mentioned, it is a good idea to add boiling water to the system so it is at the same temp as what is already there.

[Big T]

Big T. My plan was to cook with water and without.
Also a question on draft. Will it help to go bigger on the stack length to help with draft? Will it pull harder?

I'm not sure if a longer stack will help or not, the stack will be pretty long since it starts at the bottom of the CC.

[Big T]

[/quote]
Question for Big T or anyone who has seen an auto watering system:
Just curious about the auto watering system.. Does it run off of a brass float and valve, similar to an evap cooler?
I found one in the attached video, but it seems a little wonky the way it was put together. Concept may be good, but different parts might be in order..
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=au ... &FORM=VIRE
[/quote]

The one that I saw had a external box with a float similar to what's in a toilet. It had a pipe that was plumbed into the water pan inside the smoker, they had a water hose that stayed connected during the cook and it would add water as needed. Skip to 2:16 seconds on this video and you can see a very similar set up but the one I saw wasn't done as nice as this one.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRMNqYzC6Tc

[dacolson]

Big T. My plan was to cook with water and without.
Also a question on draft. Will it help to go bigger on the stack length to help with draft? Will it pull harder?

I'm not sure if a longer stack will help or not, the stack will be pretty long since it starts at the bottom of the CC.

You need to make sure the stack is taller than the top of your false walls at a minimum. Aside from that, just get it up over your head for smoke clearance.


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[Evans Custom]

Will do. Thanks everyone for the advise

[Evans Custom]

Still not finished with this beast. I work too much! LOL. Now it sits on a cart. Prep table coming soon. Pics coming

[Evans Custom]

[Big T]

I hate when work gets in the way of my hobbies!

[dacolson]

Sweet wheels!


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[Evans Custom]

Life allowed a little time for the smoker.

[Big T]

Getting closer!