So I finally got around to adding an air distribution pipe for my blower. These are common over on the heater meter forum. Not done yet. Still have to drill the air holes in the ring, But I thought I could include some pics. The reason for doing this is to help the charcoal basket burn evenly when using a blower instead of predominantly on one side when you introduce air in through a damper hole.. I have never had a problem with it because I had a small deflector over the hole the air came in at, which help to spread it around the bowl a little bit. But it was still obvious My charcoal was burning predominantly on the side the blower air was coming in. So why not address it? A Saturday afternoon available and $75 burning a hole in my pocket......
For some reason many people don't want to drill into their Weber bowl that's understandable. When it's a couple years old you kind of get over that hesitance.
So I put the attachment for my blower on the very bottom. Had to drill through my leg supports to do it. Not being able to drill about a 1-in hole in 1/4-in steel.... I had to drill a maximum of 5/8 and then use a carbide burr in a drill press too enlarge the hole.... It actually worked better than I thought it was going to. Did make a mess of small metal particle though. May need to reinforce those leg supports a little now. That's going to be done anyway because the pipe will be supported on a cross bar between two legs to make it a very rigid unit that won't apply any bending force to the bowl where the fitting inserts if you kick it or lift it up by it or whatever.
The reason I did it this way was so it would be easy to remove the air distributor simply by lifting up out of the tubing fitting. It can be removed and washed out to remove any ash. No, ask getting into the holes that'll be in it is not a problem typically, but some people solder there is altogether and then it would be a little more difficult. And if I didn't want to use a blower I could cap that off easily with a small tubing stub with a cap on it.
I also decided not to solder any of the tubing connections, I'm putting a screw into each of them to lock them together. Except for the one where it will lift out when I want to.
For some reason many people don't want to drill into their Weber bowl that's understandable. When it's a couple years old you kind of get over that hesitance.
So I put the attachment for my blower on the very bottom. Had to drill through my leg supports to do it. Not being able to drill about a 1-in hole in 1/4-in steel.... I had to drill a maximum of 5/8 and then use a carbide burr in a drill press too enlarge the hole.... It actually worked better than I thought it was going to. Did make a mess of small metal particle though. May need to reinforce those leg supports a little now. That's going to be done anyway because the pipe will be supported on a cross bar between two legs to make it a very rigid unit that won't apply any bending force to the bowl where the fitting inserts if you kick it or lift it up by it or whatever.
The reason I did it this way was so it would be easy to remove the air distributor simply by lifting up out of the tubing fitting. It can be removed and washed out to remove any ash. No, ask getting into the holes that'll be in it is not a problem typically, but some people solder there is altogether and then it would be a little more difficult. And if I didn't want to use a blower I could cap that off easily with a small tubing stub with a cap on it.
I also decided not to solder any of the tubing connections, I'm putting a screw into each of them to lock them together. Except for the one where it will lift out when I want to.
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