In the land of wood pellet stoves, there is a alleged cure for long pellets that have a tendency to cause auger problems. It's known as the walk-on method where the bag is laid flat then walked on to break up

 the pellets.  Does it work? Can't say. It has some degree of merit however.

I recently went through that issue. It turns out that I had a lot of grease buildup in my stack. It actually resulted in an auger fire. I took the stack off and cleared the buildup and it is back to running normally.

I have done two smokes since I posted the issue and I had no issues.  I did not clean it prior to those smokes.  The ambient temps were in the low to mid 30's on both of them.  I will need to clean it before I smoke something again.  I am sure there is only LJ pellets in my hopper now.  The possible bad pellets will be used in my smoke tubes.

I will check my smoke stack plus I have the cap off.

 That is good news. Afterall, cooking should be a pleasurable experience: no need to be dealing with pit problems.

 As stated above.. Adding a handful of pellets to the firepot after it has been cleaned will assure a faster and more positive start-up = good insurance.

For my GMG the hot rod went out and had to replace it, you can always start it with a torch until you get a replacement hot rod. I also have had the auger jam as well, but when that happens you know because it doesn’t make any noise and the auger on a GMG are loud


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I cleaned out my smoker like I always do, but I dropped in some pellets in the firepot this time.  The smoker started up like it was supposed to and it was a cold morning also.  I firmly believe now it was the bad pellets causing the auger to jam up some.