Ooh - I definitely would not use a hammer drill on terracotta - that’s really asking for trouble. I just wondered if masonry bits might have given a tad extra ‘bite’.
I’ve drilled wide holes in ceramic before, using diamond dust-covered hole bits, which needed a lot of water cooling. But that was much harder ceramic, fired at high temperatures. Terracotta is indeed much softer, but just as likely to crack when drilled, I reckon.
That is the “Alton Brown” style I was talking about. Either two regular pots stacked on top of each other with a grate, or a rounded pot set in a dish style with something to hold the meat up. Often run on a hot plate. It’s fun, and it’s a great way to improvise a smaller smoker when you don’t have one. Say for a camping trip or while at an Air B&B. But they definitely don’t hold up long term, and they aren’t really any easier to smoke on than a regular charcoal grill.
That seems to be the read on them. The Joes give you a better product for slightly less.
I’d be less concerned about the benefits being lost due to your climate. From what I understand the steel units are insulated or double walled so they perform pretty much like a ceramic. They’re still constructed like an oven, just not a stone or ceramic one. All that mass or insulation is great when it’s cold, but it’s also what gives you all the radiant heat that makes them so good at baking and keeps the temps so even.
But my cousin in Dublin picked up a BGE around 20 years back, and actually had to purchase it from Germany and pick it up in Spain. They didn’t have distribution in Europe at the time.
Anyway it cracked in the first 5 years, down to just how wet it is in Ireland all the damn time. Thing is it works just fine despite the crack. So he hasn’t even looked into replacing it.
You’re in The Bay Area right? Rain would be what had me looking at steel.
My sister and her fiancé had been shopping for a smoker or charcoal grill to go along with their propane grill. And had gotten very interested in the Eggs, he wants to get into barbeque, she bakes and is borderline vegetarian most of the time. So it fits their uses much better than anything else. I pointed them towards the Joes. But the kamado fund became a wedding fund. I’m probably going to get them the Charbroil Akorn steel kamado as their wedding gift.
They do seem to be the best all rounder. Though it’s not hard to out perform most home offsets. Your looking at Kamado money by the time they get functional.
And there is very different math between “I will by separate things that are better at specific tasks” and “I will buy separate thousand dollar things that are better at specific tasks”.
In my experience when you get water involved things explode.
Also in my experience he was either lucky or we didn’t see the part where he cracked multiple pots in the attempt. Terracotta is pretty soft, and it does drill easy. But it is really brittle. We occasionally end up drilling drainage holes in pots that don’t already have them. You do want a masonry bit, and you want to tape either side of the hole before drilling and go slow.
Well, masonry bits are explicitly dull. There’s a little dull chisel on the end of them. The whole point (pardon the pun) is they chip the material out when combined with a hammer drill. Using one in a regular drill would not do anything for any material, I don’t imagine.
Just to note, I don’t think that crack came from heating, if that’s what you meant. It looks to me like the crack is there before he even completes or uses the grill.
Oh, I agree about that. The crack seen was a production issue.
I was more thinking about the life of the finished item (ref your comment re your friend’s, in use). Some soaking might help - adopting the same principle that applies to the use of a chicken brick before heating it - also delivers more succulent meat and this may also apply to meat cooked in this thing.
Never heard of a chicken brick—learn something new every day! especially on the bbs 
They do produce very succulent chickens. 
This is massively unsafe.
The first issue is that the glaze used to waterproof the pots may be prone to offgassing God-knows-what when heated to next-to-a-red-hot-coal temperatures or leaching God-knows-what if it comes into contact with the food. There’s absolutely no guarantee that the manufacturer has made any effort to select a baking- and food-safe glaze, since there are fucking flowerpots. (In the YouTube description he claims the pots are unglazed, but this is really hard to believe for an outdoor flowerpot.)
The second issue is that the clay itself likely includes problematic impurities. All clay contains impurities; that’s the nature of the stuff. Some common impurities are harmless, but some (sulphur, various metals) may offgass fumes at next-to-a-red-hot-coal temperatures that are toxic when inhaled, damaging to eye tissue, toxic when accreted on food and ingested, or some combination thereof. Manufacturers of ceramic cookware are supposed to use clay that’s free of problematic impurities. Manufacturers of flowerpots can use whatever clay they want.
(Aside, the YouTube description mentioned lead, but claimed they didn’t contain any because they were made in Italy. Setting aside the obvious “what-the-fuck-ism” that being made in Italy somehow guarantees they’re lead-free, this is probably the least of this guy’s worries. You’re unlikely to reach the temperatures needed to produce lead fumes in this context, and, even if you did, lead’s so heavy it would have a hard time rising up to the food.)
A third issue is that, while it’s hard to tell from the video, it looks like he used some galvanized steel parts. Galvanized steel is dangerous in this sort of thing because it will offgass some really nasty zinc fumes. DIY BBQ gear should use only stainless steel or plain old carbon steel (the stuff that rusts. Though rust isn’t great for flavor, so stick to stainless for parts that will touch the food.) In theory, galvanized steel parts that are far enough away from the coals shouldn’t pose a problem, but it’s better just to make a rule of never using them rather than risk screwing up the math for how hot a given screw might get.
Finally, the adhesive on that felt (was that stuff felt?) is probably another source of natsy fumes when heated to baking temperatures.
A non-safety-related thought: What’s the point of this anyway? BBQ is, by definition, “low and slow” cooking via indirect heat, often with smoke. This sure looks like direct heat to me. If you’re going to do that, why not just get a webber kettle and call it a day?
Terracotta pots are unglazed.
Terracotta is the same stuff as used in assorted cookware such as chicken bricks and tandoors, for example. Terracotta has been used for centuries, in many cultures, for cooking in.
This makes interesting background reading. It does say, towards the end, that
Reputable companies test if the clay from the area is free from chemicals and pollutants.
https://sliceofkitchen.com/terracotta-cookware/
Do you have any evidence that clay used for horticultural use is different from terracotta cookware clay?
Those pots are unglazed. Standard terracotta pots are unglazed. It’s not the sort of thing that’s damaged by water and they are intended to be porous, indoor or out. For drainage purposes. Helps prevent over watering.
Terracotta pots are glazed to retain water. Not for water proofing. And if a pot is glazed it’s readily apparent both by look and in feel.
Lead is not commonly found in terracotta. And the contents in of the soil used to make them is typically known. Lead contamination typically comes from lead based glazes, not all countries use those. Most places don’t have lead contamination in the clay itself.
More over terracotta is frequently used to make cooking vessels (glazed and unglazed). And those are coming out of the same production, in the same places as the flower pot. Italy is one of the places with a reputation for not having lead problems.
And lead contamination is dangerous if you’re just planting in them around the house.
It’s one of those avoid this product from X place sort of things.
Forget the exact details but Italian, unglazed terracotta is generally considered safe. China is the big thing to avoid.
Doesn’t look galvanized in the still above, galvanized metal tends to be a dull, satiny grey. Like zinc. Those are pretty shiny.
It looks like a standard BGE brand kamado gasket, which is felt. And uses heat safe adhesive.
Google kamado. It might also pay to learn a bit about barbecue. It’s not always indirect, or even low and slow. But kamados tend to manage indirect by vertical distance from the fire, and cook mainly though radiant heat built up in the ceramic walls
The project is a bit dumb. But mostly because its a lot of work and extra expense put into something that won’t last. When you can get a Weber Kettle (plenty good at low and slow, indirect BTW, it’s what I use) for a hundo.
As I understand it it’s not, the manufacturers tend to be the same too. The soils used for terracotta aren’t naturally lead bearing. So barring pollution lead gets there by way of lead glazes.
If you’re firing lead glazes in the same kilns as unglazed terracotta you can get lead in the unglazed.
I never thought of those as particularly efficient heaters to begin with, to be honest, at least for a typical 3 meter by 3 meter room.
More or less correct. If you are drilling holes in tile, you’ll want a specialty bit for making the initial hole in the tile before going to town on the substrate, unless you don’t mind shattering the tile. 
If you are making holes in block walls, plaster over cinder block, or concrete, a regular drill won’t do anything useful. An impact driver won’t do much better. A hammer drill works, but it takes a bit of time. A rotary hammer is the best and fastest way to get the job done.
I can state that rotary hammers work rather well on plaster over block house walls (common in the southwest around the 50’s and 60’s) and for putting in Tapcon™ fasteners for hanging stuff on those types of walls. It’s the sole reason why I have on and a collection of SDS+ masonry bits in my power tool collection. 
Gee, thanks for the stamp of approval. I was almost afraid my 20 years of construction experience wasn’t correct. Thank you, Man Of The Internet! I feel better.
Sorry about that, was not meaning to come off as condescending. 
No matter what they do, it’s still the same BTUs as the candles would normally produce. The only benefit is that it’s a warm radiant surface rather than a thin column of hot air that goes straight to the ceiling.
Some of the videos have magical thinking where if you get the number of pots and washers just right, it’ll heat the whole place up. 
I’ll stick to my glass and metal candle lamp that won’t turn into a bomb hours later.
nods I’ll stick to my oil-filled radiator for the back room of my house, and the heat pump for the main part of it. 
The day I can cut a perfect circle from steel with an angle grinder is the day I can die happy. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but with my skills I’d have made a jagged ovoid that I would them file down to a smaller ovoid that never quite becomes circular.
“Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
The latest surge of those videos was just after the Texas freezeout. I can understand the temptation for anything that’d keep the pipes from bursting, and maybe they’d make the difference, but if I had to go with unattended flames, I’d go for tea lights on saucers, floating in a pan of water.
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