BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

[Jonathontd]

This is my second oven. The first one was sold with our house and will forever be missed. The most important lesson I learned from my previous oven was that I would like to use that space under the oven for something more important than storing wood. My idea is to build a Smoke pit that vents into the chimney from the oven.

Some potential problems I have already thought of:

1. The smoker will be low to the ground
2. I will have to build a permanent form for the hearth base because the typical open space under the oven will be consumed.

Has anyone attempted such a design? Any thoughts?

Jonathon

[macaudle]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

I was thinking put a smoker box off of the vent from the oven. It would be smaller but wouldn't need two burning spaces. and I was also thinking to drop the height of the oven to not waste space, or do something different as well. Maybe put an outdoor oven or a fridge in there.
Mike

[christo]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

The ash slot used to be a part of many of our designs.

I always wondered if that could be put to good use as a conduit to put heat and smoke into the oven with a door in place.

Small smoker fire beneath and the smoke and heat is funnelled into the dome for a days worth of smoking texas style beef brisket or North Carolina Barbeque.

I posted some links to a Japanese Pizza oven on here a few years ago. I think it's similar to what is lately heard around here as a white oven. That guys design could easily be used as a smoker.

Christo

[christo]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven



heres a pic and a link to the original posts. Glad I put some pics on here as the web link no longer works.

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f6/f...above-439.html

For pizza days I'd be tempted to block off the hole in the back and make the fire inside the top dome.

the cool thing was that you could build a fire on the bottom level and use the middle grate to grill, too.

christo

[EADavis]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

The ash slot used to be a part of many of our designs.
Small smoker fire beneath and the smoke and heat is funnelled into the dome for a days worth of smoking texas style beef brisket or North Carolina Barbeque.
Christo

Mmmmmmm......Eastern North Carolina Barbeque...<drool>

[Jonathontd]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

I built the smoker and routed the chimney out the back and over the dome. Pictures will be up in the coming weeks. The draw is great and we have smoked more meat than you can imagine. Two old boiler doors make up the front.

More to come.

Jonathon

[Loren]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

I just saw your post and I am interested to see what you came up with. Do you guys have any informaiton or links on how to smoke a brisket or ribs as Christo mentioned?

If you scroll down the fifth post here: http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f18/...vens-7609.html

You can see my post about smoking and a link to my oven. I have planed to adapt a sheet metal flu from the ash slot to the inside of the oven. I have the same idea as you but will use the method.

Loren

[Jonathontd]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

I am attaching a picture of my idea. It seems to work fine routing the smoke out of the back of the smoker and then over the dome into the chimney. More to come.

[dmun]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

That's fine for a freestanding oven, but if it's going to go past a building inspector, you can't vent two wood burning functions with a common flue.

[Jonathontd]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

I am going to make the chimney slightly wider and vent them separately up the same stack. The smoker works better than expected. A guest from Houston says that it produced meat as good as anything she has had at the best bbq places in Texas.

[Hoosier 45]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

I am new to all of this and am in the early reseach stage of building a multi function oven/smoker/grill/spit roaster as well. I was wanting to do as you are describing with a smoker chamber below but make it with removable steel doors and big enough to spit roast a small to medium size hog.

It seam like if you were roasting a hog you could use the oven to burn down your wood to coals then just use a long handled shovel to move then to the smoking chamber for the roasting operation.

When you want to smoke just put on the doors fire it up and cut the air.

Where is the ash slot that has been mentioned? That seems like a good way of moving your smoke into the oven from below.
Martin

[Loren]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

Martin,

The ash slot is in direct line with the flu pipe in my oven. It is used for removing the ash so you can bake bread. It is about 5" x 10". I was thinking of getting some heating duct fittings, say a rectangular to round adapter and having a short pipe take the smoke in to the main chamber. It should work out fine.

Good luck with the plans.

Loren

[Hoosier 45]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

So the ash slot is in the front of the oven and inline with the flue? It seems like it would do a better job of evenly filling the oven with smoke if it were located to the side or the back. That way the smoke would be less likely to travel straight up the chimney. I guess the ash slot has a metal plate covering during normal oven operation?

[Loren]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

Yes, I did not want to vent anything directly in to the oven. I think there would be too much outside air introduced in to the oven, sure you could plug it but how effective would the plug be. Not a good thing while trying to bake. But if you are not that interested in baking your idea should be fine. Check out the pic and you can see the ash slot.

The ash slot is not inside the oven area so you can cover it or not, I have not lost any pizza yet!

So if I were to install some sheet metal with a 4" 90 degree elbow to direct smoke in from the front of the oven it should work fine, no smoke up the flue, just in to the main oven chamber.

Here is another early shot of the oven so you can get a better idea.

[texassourdough]

Re: BBQ Smoker under Pizza Oven

The ash slot is a somewhat common feature on baking ovens to facilitate removing ashes. From other WFO bakers it is my impression that a good portion of those who have ash slots don't use them and that those of us who don't have ash slots don't feel we miss them.

To be most functional ash slots should have a suspended tray that fits below the ash slot to catch the ashes and to keep the area below the ash slot usable for storage. My take is that the tray can be a mess, sometimes getting water in it, caking, etc. I am quite happy to simply remove it with my ash shovel and drop it in my galvanized trash can where I rescue charcoal from the embers I shovel in.