Is water in the water pan really needed?

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rattlin_ram

Fire Starter
Original poster
Sep 18, 2007
50
10
Manson, IA
So after my weekend smoke with my new Char Broil CB600X I got at wal mart I am now figuring out what I can do to make it work better... I only found a few threads about this smoker on here and not many mods....  What i found during my smoke was the water pan boils the water out fairly quick (2 hours or less) and it seems to produce a lot of steam in the smoker rather than just TBS.  It makes the smoker look like it's belching out smoke, but it's actually just steam.  It seems with the design of this smoker water isn't really even needed, I mean the pan covers the entire bottom of the smoker so no direct heat can go up anyway....   So do I even need water in the pan?  I don't use any water on my Char Griller Smokin Pro and never had a problem with dry meat unless I over cooked something... 

I've read about guys filling their water pans with sand or lava rock, but do I even need to with this one?  Below is the picture of the drawer, the wood goes in the center and water around the sides.

86bad16c_drawer.jpg
 
One thing I did note on the smoker though is it doesn't leak very much at all!  Door closes nicely with no modifications!
 
The temps will stay steadier with sand in the pan as opposed to nothing, but the way yours is configured it would be really hard to put foil over the sand and you would have to throw the sand away after every smoke. Not really a big deal, a bag of play sand is only a couple of bucks at Home Depot.
 
I'm thinking of filling with sand and cutting a piece of sheet metal to go over the top so it could be removed and cleaned.  With a hole in the center for wood chips.

With the water it was so steamy inside I had water dripping out the sides.

That and a good thermometer in the door I think are about all I need!  I had no problems getting temps up like a few others I read about so hopefully I don't have those issues.

Anyone else have one of these and made any mods?
 
I was thinking about doing the exact some thing with the metal sheet over the sand and the hole in the middle.  Let me know if you did it and it worked out!  
 
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