Electric heater from a water heater

Hello everybody! I decided to write about creating my own smokehouse, which I use all year round. In my opinion, the use of an electric smokehouse is much more convenient compared to a conventional one, for which an open fire is used. I loaded wood chips, products for smoking, plugged it into a power outlet, and it only remained to wait a bit. Well, it all started with the fact that I came across an old electric titanium. Throwing away a thing that has served its term is not a tricky business, but it is more difficult to make it seem unnecessary, at first glance, to become useful. The idea came when they once again decided to smoke a fish. Before that, we smoked in an enameled bucket on an electric stove. And in winter, we also had to insulate the bucket so that it was easier to maintain the desired temperature inside. The bulb of a factory-warmed water heater is almost perfect for making an electric smokehouse.








Carefully remove the upper part of the casing from the former water heater, which will later become the cover for the smokehouse. In the lid we drill a hole for installing a kitchen thermometer, with which it is easier to control the temperature inside when smoking.

Next, we clean the insulation to the side walls. We weld the legs from pieces of corners or whatever is at hand - it does not matter, the main thing is that the design is stable. On the other side of our design, we cut off the casing along with the bottom of the bulb.

The result was a cylinder at the bottom, which we set an electric ten from a tile of 1 kW. - This power is quite enough. To do this, drill holes in the bottom of the smokehouse according to the size of the ten.

It is desirable that the terminals of the electroten are located on the outside of the bulb. Inside, high temperature and wire insulation will not withstand and melt. Even if the wires are placed in ceramic tubes, the copper conductors will refuse and the contact connection with the tena terminals will be broken.

Such a connection is more reliable and there will be no heating of the wires.

We are looking for a suitable diameter container for collecting fat.

In order to keep the bowl at a distance from the heating element, it was necessary to weld a cross-piece from wire.

At the top of the flask we drill holes for skewers, on which products will be suspended in the future. The skewers themselves are made of wire with a diameter of 4 or 5 mm.

That's basically all you can use. For wood chips, it is advisable to adapt a small iron plate, which can be placed directly on the heating element, and at the end of smoking it will be easier to remove the ash. In the future I plan to install electronic thermal relay for automatic control of the set temperature.

Thank you all for watching!