Thoughts on water pans

[Steve]

So I'm thinking about how to put a removable water pan in the Backwoods style build we're doing at the moment. What we have is the cook chamber floor directly above the firebox made out of 1.5mm mild steel, I was considering removing this and putting a 2/1 x 100mm stainless gastronorm pan in its place but I'm concerned that having this directly above the fire with no heat deflector might be a bad idea.

The other option would be to rest the pan directly on top of the chamber floor which would act as a heat deflector.

Any thoughts people?

[All Weather Griller]

If the floor of the smoker is directly above the charcoal bay, would it not get hot enough to just sit a large foil tray on?

I would have thought you would want to foil the bottom to make cleaning easier.