[Steve Viegas]

I have a smoker that takes charcoal and wood. It does a fine job but requires a lot of hands on. Every 15 minutes I am adding either wood or charcoal.

I am thinking about using the housing from this smoker but changing the fuel. I believe I can use a heating element (hot plate) to provide the heat and smoke the wood.

From calculations available on the web, I need about 50 BTUs to maintain the heat I need and I found a hotplate that will provide about 3000 BTUs.

In order to create smoke, I think I can put wood chips into a metal container, with limited air supply thereby creating a smoldering effect as opposed to fire. My current thinking is using the charcoal holder from my smoker and putting a pie tin (which is really aluminium) upside down on it, with soaked wood in the airspace created.

Anyone want to explain to me why this will not work and why I should make sure that my property insurance is up to date? In theory, I think it should be good as long as I can regulate the tempurature (a huge if I suppose).

Thanks for your input.