so how are you attaching your blower to the smoker


 
Wayne Ficklin said:
Phillip P, thanks for speaking from experience. I looked yesterday and realized that the vents come in beside the charcoal bowl rather than under it so other than getting really creative, I concluded the bowl is going to have to be cut. I'm not QUITE ready to do that yet. Did you figure out a way to seal up the bottom hole when not in use with a blower?
Click to expand...

Wayne,

I came to the conclusion I would have to drill a hole in the bottom of the WSM and put in a bushing:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-3-4-in-x-1-2-in-Black-Malleable-Iron-Hex-Bushing-521-943HN/100122624?N=5yc1vZbqn5Z1z0ugnd

That way, you could put on a threaded end on the blower end and screw it into the exterior of the bushing. Then put a threaded end on the intake to your airburner and screw that into the interior of the bushing.

To plug it up when not needed, put in a plug into the exterior of the bushing:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-3-4-in-Black-Malleable-Iron-Plug-521-804HN/100075411?N=5yc1vZbqn5Z1z0ugnd


The Webers are really easy to drill through, but make sure you thoroughly tape on both sides of the drilling spot and drill a pilot hole first. Otherwise, you can pretty easily mess up the finish. I learned that the hard way with my kettle.

The pet food bowl is a really good solution for plain blowers or dampers.

I have recently acquired some roto-dampers from Ralph Trimble and will be trying that out by mounting it to the BBQ Guru universal Weber mount and plugging the other vent holes with the steel hole plugs.

https://bbqguru.com/StoreNav?CategoryId=2&ProductId=6
 
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Here's my setup for my Char-Griller offset.

I used a 4" A/C Elbow and 5" to 4" Reducer to make my "Vortex Tube". I mounted the servo with an angle bracket I made, and the damper was made from a 1/8" SS rod and 3-7/8" diameter SS sheetmetal. The fan is a 120MM PC fan I recovered from a dead power supply. I dremeled away the four corners of the fan housing to round-out the fan and pressed it into the reducer. Each side of the fan is guarded as well as the firebox portion of the tube to protect against embers making their way inside.


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The Heatermeter was assembled and mounted in a Pelican Case. The 4 way switch is accessible under the rubber flap and all the wires exit the back though a waterproof fitting.
 
i bought some 15mm copper tube, 90° connectors and a t-connector. ready to solder :) still looking for an idea how to mount it into one of the 3 inlet holes of my wsm where the fan is mounted.
did you use regular solder? this solder get's fluid at 300°C. isn't this too low for "near super hot coal"? will it melt?
i could still hard-solderit which is 600°C, but this would be more expensive as silver solder would be needed.
 
It depends on the setup... if the copper is far enough away from the fire it wont get hot enough to worry about, or you can always press fit copper fittings without any solder at all.. I soldered the copper pipes to the adapter plate on my kamado and they are fine, the plated doesnt get very hot at all...
 
so i will keep it a bit away from the coal.
one more question: i bought 15mm copper tube (5/8in). i used some duct tape to guide the air from the 10cfm fan through a piece of rod with 3x 3mm (1/8in) holes. this reduces the air flow dramatically of course.
do you think that the reduction of the 40x15mm square from the fan to 15mm round rod may be too much for the fan to deliver enough air?
i know i can try it out, but i'd like to clarify as many questions as possible before drilling holes in my baby :)
 
Warning to Noobies! Building a heatermeter may lead to having to buy a 3D printer then having to learn CAD software so as to reinvent the wheel and devise your own air controller! :) :(


 
I don't have pictures, but I have a squirrel-cage fan connected to a pet watering bowl affixed with a toggle bolt through it into the WSM (as was described in an earlier post on this thread). I sharpied* around the outside of the fan's face onto the flat side of the bowl, then dremeled* an X diagonally, not cutting all the way to the sharpie mark. Then I folded the pieces of the bowl to fit inside the fan face securely and used JB Weld to attach it. I feel confident its not going anywhere.

Hopefully that helps someone.


* verbing words weirds them.
 
Servo attached to weber kettle

It's not a blower attached to a smoker but a servo attached to a 22" weber kettle. I used parts of the construction kit of the kids to attach a quarter sized servo (which is no longer buzzing and chattering - thank's Bryan) to my weber kettle:



The connection of the servo is pretty much prototype (as the whole construction is). I guess I need the RD3 from Ralph. With my weber kettle I could make use of the connection box. I really like the idea having my heatermeter sitting inside only running a cat5 cable to the grill. Once I upgrade to a kamado, I could use the whole RD3.

I have some more pictures with the vent fully open and closed:




I guess with my kettle I still have to go the minion ring route, as I did w/o HM?


As for the PID settings: I did read in a German forum the suggestion for such an setup would be P = 15, I = 0 and D = 0. Any advice on this?
 
Wow, that's something else! I'd love to see a video of that thing moving your vent... Robot Grills are now a reality! LOL
 
Here's my Mini WSM with a Rotodamper 3 attached. It uses a Smokey Joe Gold as the kettle. I leave one side just closed off, and the other side vents fully open. I found a 1" metal hole plug to seal off one of the two holes on the side with the damper. For the the inlet, I just used a short 3/4" threaded black iron pipe nipple. Amazingly, it just screws right in to the factory hole, no cutting, sanding, etc needed (and you can remove it if you need to). I then have my RD3 attached via a black iron pipe coupler. The RD3 output has an epoxied 3/4" PVC sprinkler pipe adapter on it I measure the temp on the iron nipple with the grill at 250 degrees, and the nipple was 105 degrees. Since PVC doesn't start to melt until about 280, this setup should work great.

 
Good day everyone,

I appologise in advance if my question has been asked before though I could not find it in the thread:
I would like to built an airburner for my WSM 18.5. How do the people who are using these prevent the holes from clogging up with ash?
Is this happening at all or is this simply not a problem / issue?
 
So I decided to try the Auber snap on blower with my 22" WSM. Unfortunately I can't recommend it at this point. The blower attaches to the pit nicely but the angle it attaches it just seems to blow cool air up into the top of the pit and it really only seemed to be good at bringing down the temp quickly.

IMG_20151001_001213_zpsz9tjarol.jpg


IMG_20151001_003133_zpsjpq2x4mt.jpg


I found a pic of how the BBQ Guru Weber adapter attaches and noted how it points down to actually blow down into and under the coals and I can imagine it's much more effective at stoking the fire.

IMG_2871_zpsjeayksxj.jpg
 
MichaelJF said:
I found a pic of how the BBQ Guru Weber adapter attaches and noted how it points down to actually blow down into and under the coals and I can imagine it's much more effective at stoking the fire.
Click to expand...

I think that's the sort of thing I need for my rig. I'm going to fabricate a deflector and see if that helps my blower act more like a stoker and less like a cooler. I've seen that BBQ Guru adapter but never paid attention to the "insides" of the mount. Thanks for the eye opener.

Todd
 
You can also set your max fan speed to something < 100%. For my UDS and fan I have it set at 30%, or else it just cools the smoker as well. The fan could just be over sized.

david
 
Maarten van Rijn said:
Good day everyone,

I appologise in advance if my question has been asked before though I could not find it in the thread:
I would like to built an airburner for my WSM 18.5. How do the people who are using these prevent the holes from clogging up with ash?
Is this happening at all or is this simply not a problem / issue?
Click to expand...

My burner on my WSM 22.5 never has gotten clogged by ash, so far.
 
Yah, I had meant to reply to that too... I never had a problem with clogs with my air burner either. I think the positive air flow makes the ash miss the holes for the most part. And there's plenty of space in the tube so if a little ash gets in there it won't hinder air flow.
 
D Peart said:
You can also set your max fan speed to something < 100%. For my UDS and fan I have it set at 30%, or else it just cools the smoker as well. The fan could just be over sized.

david
Click to expand...

I can't speak for Todd but I tried turning the max fan speed all the way down to 10%. It just cooled the pit slower.
 
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