The first smoker I built was an Alton Brown style terracotta pot smoker. I killed a couple of different electric burners before I found one that would hold up to any significant use. One important tip is to make sure you put a heavy pan directly on the burner, preferably cast iron, so that it doesn't just burn itself out. It was never big enough or reliable enough to justify the cost of building it. It sucked checking it in the morning, and finding out that it had died sometime in the night, and my brisket was now garbage.