The new thermostat was really easy to install, probably the most time involved "where did I put that screwdriver?"
After firing up the new thermostat on the empty smoker I did not see however, any noticeable difference, highs in the 260's lows in the 210's. So I decided to repeat the test that CS told me to run in the first place. That is run the Smokette at dial temp 250 for three hours, recording the temperature every 10 minutes.
This time the outside temperature was about 20 degrees warmer than with the previous test, but the results to two significant figures was still the same average temperature over the 16 measurements once the oven reached its operating range.
Looking at the oven of my household range I noticed that the thermostat probe is hanging in the air on the top of the oven, and the probe for my CS 105 is sticking into space mid level.
With the Smokette it is firmly attached flat to the smoker wall. Stainless steel is quite a poor conductor of heat for a metal, so one could surmise that as attached, the walls would act as a heat sink, slightly raising the up side temperature and slightly lowering the low side temperature.
To test my theory I bought a 3/4 inch copper pipe clamp, drilled out the holes so that the thermostat bulb would fit through the them, and flattened out the clamp and drilled a mounting hole. I reinstalled the thermostat using the CS mounting clamp. As a result the thermostat bulb now is about a half inch off the back wall of the smoker.
I reran the test and again saw no difference in the average temperatures of the oven. So all three tests over three hours showed no significant differences, with the equipment and test procedures used.
Isn't it awful to have spent a number of years running a research laboratory.
What I did find however, as expected, is that with the thermostat off the wall the high temperature swings seemed a little lower and the low temperature swings a little higher, but checking every 10 minutes very seldom do you actually get the high and low temperature.
With the thermostat attached to the wall I had four cycles from low to high in the three hour period. With the thermostat away from the wall I ran the test for four hours, but had six cycles in 3 hours and 50 minutes. Again to be expected, because of the removal of the heat sink from the smoker walls.
THE TEST: My theory is since the temperatures on all tests were about the same more cycles might be a good thing. So last night I loaded said Smokette with 5 ounces of wood, 2 ten pound bone in pork butts, (20 pounds total) and set the temperature at 225.
Something woke me up about 2:30 so I decided to go check out the smoking. Man we were at almost 180 internal on the bottom biggest butt. At 12 1/2 hours the probe went off at 190. That's a keeper. Yield, 63% pulled pork in the pan. This included opening the door an making sure that there was adequate clearance between the thermostat bulb and the bottom butt. Which there was.
I don't know whether more cycles helped or not, but considering my experience with the old thermostat and the average temperatures of all the tests being the same, I had expected a cooking time with this big of a load more in the range of 20 hours.
