Wood consumption.

[darkshadow]

I did find one notation in my reading that RF smokers chew threw more wood to maintain temps then offsets.

How much so?

I also saw a post on here resently with a photo of their fire box and it being mostly empty other then a couple of small splits and the coment about how little it took to keep temps.

As I'm planing out my build I'm just wondering as I am over building on my needs.

Are your FB's pack to the 9's burning or are you just using a small amount to maintain after warm up. And what size CC are you running?? Yes I realize many factors will come in to play. Just looking for a benchmark.

 

[ribwizzard]

By design, they use less wood as more heat is absorbed before it exits the cooking chamber.

 

[darkshadow]

Ah so it's all lies purpotrated by the stack cooker conglomerate!!

So what's your consumption? Vs cooker size??

10lbs to start? 1 or 2 splits ever two hours? One? Four?

 

[brooksy]

My chamber is 60x30. I start with a full chimney of lump and about 5/6 decent size splits for heat up. Then it's 1 or 2 every hour after for the rest of the smoke.

 

[darkshadow]

Ok. Not too bad for the volume. That's the tank size I have still not sure if I will keep it. Was going to build smaller but got the tank for free.

Any other input?

 

[alblancher]

Well lets make one point.  It takes a good deal of wood to get a heavy built rf to temp.  You got a lot of steel to get hot.  Once to temp you can normally maintain the heat with a smaller fire.   An inexpensive offset is easy to heat up and will lose heat pretty fast when the fire dies down.

 

[darkshadow]

Oh I understand that. So far the numbers arn't that bad. I may line my CC too not yet sure.

Just looking for ball parks of whst people are using. Don't want to have to but a cord every smoke lol

 

[alblancher]

It's just so hard to say how much wood I burn.   I have a couple of sturdy black boxes that I keep my wood in at the house.  The boxes are maybe 4 ft long,2 ft wide and 2 ft tall.  I can do maybe three long smokes with a single box of wood.  The wood is split into pieces about the size of a beer can and 20 inches long.    I use about 1/4 bag of charcoal or briquettes  for every smoke to get the fire box hot and the wood fire started.

This is for a Lang 36 but every thing is so variable due to the age and dryness of the wood, temp and wind, what I am cooking, etc.