Ravel, your burned wood looks good to me. You've got some black char, some ash. More importantly, how did the food taste? You will find how your wood looks after a smoke will vary from black chunks to ash, depending on wood species, moisture content, size of pieces, placement in smoke box, temperature of smoke, etc. Wood is an organic product, and there are a lot of variables in wood that have nothing to do with your smoker/element, etc. Don't overanalyze it's exact appearance unless you are having trouble with how your food tastes, and even then, it is often an issue of adding more or less wood. I space mine out in the box, and I might have some black charred pieces and some ash, and that's success to me. I don't find the wood box difficult to clean out. Just slide it out, turn it upside down and dump it out. Not sure how foil would help very much with clean up, but maybe I'm missing something.