VIDEO SMOKEHOUSE PLANS TOUR*

This video is about helping you understand the smokehouse design better

so you can build it with more confidence. So this is what it looks like. It's

really a small wooden building. It's built fairly tight. Animals can't get in

It's got something of a raised floor in order to help deter animals from

digging in. Over here we've got the firebox. In this case this is a chunk of

concrete well tile about 30 inches in diameter and there's been a hole cut in

the side to accommodate a door and there's a lid on top. So there's a small

smoldering fire that burns in this firebox during use and the smoke is

transmitted to the smokehouse with an underground pipe. It's sloped upward slightly and it leads into the smokehouse and comes up through the

floor. The main advantage of this approach is that it will deliver cool

smoke to the smokehouse. That's pretty important because it's pretty easy to

have the smoke be too hot and to end up cooking and drying out the meat instead

of impregnating it with smoke to deliver flavor and preservative qualities. So the

separate firebox here does a great job at cooling the smoke. It also greatly

reduces the fire hazard. You know there are some smokehouse designs that

have the firebox inside but that's a little riskier. It makes more sense to

keep the fire out and well away from the wooden structure. So this is why this is

a traditional approach. It works really well. It's safe and it's time-tested. If

you take a look here at the plans there's lots of things to think about. So

we've got the concrete firebox here as I explained and then there's the

underground pipe. A concrete pipe works really well here. Besides being completely fireproof and it can't melt and it won't rot, it also helps to cool

the smoke as well. So you can find concrete pipes like this from outfits

that sell sewer supplies. Now your first step will be to install the support

posts. The design here is a kind of a pole barn structure. So we've only

shown one post going down below the surface but it would be the same thing

for all the posts. So the ones on the corner and the intermediate posts here

Also the posts that flank the door too should be supported in this way

Sinking the posts in makes for a very rigid structure. There's one trick

here though. You never really know how deep to make the holes. I mean they need

to go down below the frost line but their relative depth from one hole to

the next can vary quite easily and that will throw off the levelness of the tops

of all these posts. So as you can see this top here, this top here, this top

here, all the way around. They need to be at exactly the same height. They need to

be level. They need to form a level plane and they need to be the same as each other. The only way you're going to get that to happen is if you set the posts

There's a concrete pad here in the bottom of the hole to give some extra

bearing capabilities. It's a very simple thing to do and it adds a lot of

strength. And then the posts and the soil is filled in around the posts and

compacted down in there. And the posts are set plum so that's straight up and

down. But they're longer than they need to be. They have to be longer at this

stage because what you need to do when they're all up is that you mark a level

point on all of them all the way around. And then you go and you cut off the

posts as they're sticking straight up in the air. Now that's a bit of a pain

because you have to be working from, you know, a ladder, a stepladder, or a little

scaffolding or something like that. So it's not that convenient to be sawing

posts when they're vertical off the ground like that. But it is the only way

to get all the tops level. So you'll need to do that. The next step is to install

to cut and install some beams that connect all the the posts. And you'll see

here there's a lap joint. So this front beam here overlaps and meshes with this

side beam here. And then 12-inch spikes, 12-inch hot dipped spiral shaped

galvanized spikes need to get driven down through this. Now never ever try to

drive a big spike like this without first pre-drilling most of the way

through all these beams and then most of the way into the posts. It's the only way

you're going to get a split free result. And it's the only way that the spikes

are going to keep on going down the way they should without veering off to one

side. So you'll do the spike thing here. We don't really need a lap joint here

for these smaller 4x4 door posts that flank each side of the door. Just the

spikes alone will be fine. And the bottom is sunk down below the ground like I

explained. So this will give you your frame. You have your uprights. You've got

your beams along the top. And things are starting to look a little bit like a

smokehouse at this stage. The next stage in the construction process involves

fastening some boards on the outside. So to fill in the walls. Now you might be

thinking, I don't want to bother with boards. I'll just put up some plywood or

you know, heaven help us, some OSB and that'll be good enough. Well if you want

to have a good enough smokehouse then I guess you can do that. I would never use

OSB because it's got all kinds of urea formaldehyde glue and I can't guarantee

that some of that won't make its way onto your food if it's sitting around

the outside of everything. Same goes for plywood, although to a much lesser extent

The glue that holds the laminations of plywood together is urea formaldehyde

glue as well. So not the greatest stuff to use. What I like is 2x8 or 2x10

planks. Now you might be thinking, well that's pretty thick. We don't need them

that thick. I think structurally speaking you don't. But 2x8s and 2x10s

are pretty common and in my experience 2x10 construction grade spruce for

instance can actually be no more money than a 3 quarter inch sheathing grade

pine. So that's what first got me on to this. I realized I wasn't going to pay

any more for the extra wood and there is a substantial advantage and that

advantage is that the nails that are going to hold on, in this case cedar

shingles on the outside to waterproof this thing and to seal it better so the

smoke can't get out, those nails will be completely hidden by wood this thick

Whereas if I went with 3 quarter inch sheathing, which technically would be

thick enough to work, I'm going to see nails or staples on the inside whatever

I use and I think that's ugly and unnecessary. So I recommend 2x8 or

2x10 lumber sheathing for the walls. That will also give you some more

strength, some more thickness of solid wood to mount things on the wall if you

want as well. A shelf or a hanging hook for whatever you want to smoke in there

So it makes good sense to to go the extra mile with this thicker sheathing

The building is small too. It's not like it's going to make a huge difference whether you use something cheap and dirty like OSB or some 2x10 lumber. It's

not going to make a difference to your financial bottom line and you're just going to get a much better smokehouse if you use some fairly thick

sheathing. The next step after wall sheathing is to cut and install your

rafters. That's what you see going on here and if you look at the next page of

plans, you'll see some detailed information for cutting rafters to fit this building. Now if you want to make your smokehouse longer than this, then

that's not going to affect rafter design, but this rafter design is specific to

this width of building. When you cut the rafters, don't cut a whole bunch of

them at once. Just cut one pair and then test them out. Test them out at this end

of the building. Test them out at that end of the building. Test them out in

between just to make sure that they fit properly because the angle, location

and the location of the bird mouth pocket that you see here, the angle of

the top, it all enters into the equation and before you cut more rafters than you

need to or rather before you miscut some mistaken ones, you want to make sure they

fit properly. When you do your trial fitting, you're going to need a little scrap of wood here too to simulate the existence of the ridge board as you go

and test in the different positions. Now there's one other thing I need to talk

about before I leave the topic of rafters and it's this rafter blocking

that you see here. There's a side view of it here. When the rafters rest on the top

of the wall, they of course don't go all the way down. There's this bird's mouth

pocket here and and this little space here is the amount that the rafter

sticks up above the wall. So that's going to be open unless you do something

about it and that's where the rafter blocking comes in. It's cut at an

angle on the top, 30 degrees from square and it fits between the rafters as the

rafters go down and the idea is that it fills up the space from the top of the

wall frame right up until the underside or what will be the underside of the

roof sheathing here. So it's not that a smokehouse really needs to be that

tight of a building but you definitely want to do everything you can to keep

critters out and even if you don't have meat that's sitting in the smokehouse

between uses you don't want squirrels or chipmunks or mice or anything to be

climbing up in here and having their way inside the smokehouse. So take the time

now to seal this. There's no better time to do it than now. Once your roof boards

are on you really can't plug this area up nearly as easily so make sure you do

this after the rafters are in but before the roof sheathing goes down and you'll

have a nice tight eaves area. There's one other thing I forgot to mention before

and that has to do with the kind of wood that you use for the posts and for the

first bottom courses of the wall sheathing. Now once upon a time pressure

treated lumber was made rot resistant with something that was arsenic based

and there was reason to be concerned about food safety around something

that's got arsenic in it but it's been a long while now since arsenic based

pressure treated lumber was available for sale to ordinary people. Nowadays the

active ingredient is copper based so not nearly as toxic. I mean copper is not an

issue at least not to human beings so that's why I personally have no trouble

using modern pressure treated lumber for the posts and also for the the bottom

couple of runs of roof of wall boards because these are going to be in contact

with the soil or pretty close to in contact with it. They're also going to get water splashed on them you know the shingles will cover them too but there's

going to be a fair amount of moisture down here so I personally have no issues

using copper based pressure treated wood for these bottom runs the bottom lengths

of wall sheathing. Now you may feel differently you may want to use cedar

instead if you can find it. Cedar is rot resistant not so much as

pressure treated lumber but it's better than just straight pine or spruce or fur

or something like that so just keep that in mind as you're selecting materials

because when you get close to the ground you do want to have something that

resists rot pretty well. Just another few things before I finish up on the smoke

house plan tour. If you look at this view what I recommend here is that you

install the gable wall boards before you put on the roof boards. That way if one

of the gable wall boards sticks out a little bit further than it should you

can easily trim it off flush with the top of the rafter before the roof boards

go on. Now because we're dealing with fairly thick wall boards here there's

no need to support them in the gable area. They will be strong enough

on their own without any kind of intermediate support. Now when it comes

time to put the roof boards on once again I'm recommending some thicker material 2 by 8 or 2 by 10. It delivers a lot of strength and solidity and there

will be lots of room for you to sink shingle nails without it showing through

in an ugly way underneath. So typical shingle nails are about an inch and a

quarter long and that will be nicely hidden within the inch and a half thick

roof boards because don't forget that 2 by 8s and 2 by 10s actually only measure

an inch and a half. Just one more thing here on the back. Some sort of a

hinged smoke flap would be helpful because if your building is too tight

then the smoke won't be able to travel from the concrete firebox through this

slightly up sloping smoke pipe. If the air is in here in the smokehouse and

it won't leave then it's going to restrict the travel of smoke through the

house as well. So you'll want this smoke flap on the back so you can open it more

or less so that you have a flow a good flow of smoke through the whole house to

give you some good results on anything that you're that you're preserving in there