Height is the constraint, and it is a staircase
The default chamber is 36 by 30 by 72 inches inside. Take 3 inches off each wall and the sticks are 30 inches long with 24 inches of depth to space them along; take 6 off the top and 8 off the bottom and there are 58 inches of height to work with. Six sticks fit at 4 inch centres. Each holds 9 pieces at 2.5 inches wide with three quarters of an inch between them.
Tiers are where it gets interesting. A 14 inch hang plus a 3 inch drip gap plus a 1 inch stick is an 18 inch pitch, and the first tier needs 15 inches on its own, so 58 inches holds three tiers and 7 inches go unused. That is 162 pieces a load, weighing 259 lb.
The inch that pays and the ones that do not
Shorten the hang to 13 inches and the answer is still three tiers. Twelve inches, still three. The whole exercise of trimming an inch off the loop buys nothing at all until you reach 11 inches, at which point a fourth tier drops in and the load jumps from 162 to 216 pieces — a third more, from three inches of hang.
This is why the page prints the table rather than a rule. Where the steps fall depends on the chamber height, the two clearances, the stick thickness and the drip gap together, and moving any of them shifts the whole staircase. The only sensible way to use it is to look at your own steps and decide whether the nearest one is worth reaching.
Weight catches up before width does, sometimes
Nine pieces at 1.6 lb is 14.4 lb on a stick, comfortably under the 25 lb the form allows for. Put heavier product on — 3 lb pieces, say — and the stick tops out at 8 by weight before the 9 it would take by width, and the whole chamber drops with it. The page says which of the two limits is binding, because the fix is different: one is a spacing question and the other is a stick and rail question.
What the number is not
It is the space, and nothing more. Whether smoke and heat reach the middle of a chamber packed to 162 pieces is a question about airflow, about where your heat comes in and about how much moisture the load is giving off, and none of that is in here. Plenty of smokehouses hold far more than they run well, and finding your own working figure means loading it and looking at what comes out rather than trusting the geometry.
The page also has no view on time, on temperature, or on anything at all about what happens to the meat while it is in there. Those are the questions that matter most and they are exactly the ones a capacity calculator has no business answering.
Questions people ask
How many sausages fit in a smokehouse?
For the default 36 by 30 by 72 inch chamber, with 14 inch hanging loops on 4 inch stick centres, it is 162 pieces in one load on six sticks across three tiers, weighing 259 lb. Every one of those inputs moves it, and the hang length moves it in jumps rather than smoothly, so put your own dimensions in rather than scaling that figure.
Why does shortening the hang by an inch not gain me anything?
Because tiers are whole numbers. At the default chamber, 14, 13 and 12 inch hangs all give exactly three tiers, and only at 11 does a fourth fit — worth 54 more pieces at once. Capacity is a staircase against hang length, and the page prints where your own steps are so you can see whether the inch you were about to save is one of the ones that pays.
How far apart should sticks be in a smokehouse?
Far enough that nothing touches, and that is a measurement of your own product rather than a number anybody can give you. The form defaults to 4 inch centres as a placeholder. Loops that swing, product that swells while it cooks and a load that shifts as it dries all argue for more room than the tape suggests.
Does a full chamber smoke the same as a half-empty one?
No, and nothing on this page models that. A tightly packed load changes how air moves through the chamber and the middle of it does not see what the outside sees. The capacity figure here is the space available. What the chamber actually runs well is a number you find by loading it, looking at the result and writing it down.
What weight can a stick hold?
Your own judgement about your own sticks, rails and hangers, which is why the field asks rather than assumes. The default 25 lb is a placeholder. What the page does is tell you when weight becomes the binding limit rather than width, because at that point spacing the pieces further apart is not the fix and stronger sticks or a lighter load is.