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[Bar-B-Lew]

My pellet grill is mostly boring  and works well by its self , but,   twice now it has  flooded with pellets.  Wild smoking and burning up all the extra pellets is making me nervous.I caught it and shut it off so I dont know what it may have done.  Thinking about one of those grill gazebo things moved out in the yard a little more.

That has happened to me before when i had too much ash in the fire pot prior to start up.

[SmokinHandyman]

For the most part I trust my Maverick. I've tried 2 overnighters and both came with flame outs. So much for that idea...

Most of the time I'm no more than 30 ft away if you count zig sagging down the hall and such. I also have a 5 lb fire extinguisher 3 ft from the pit.
I trust the Maverick to keep me informed. No problems yet.

+

[Free Mr. Tony]

Is it the safest practice? Probably not.

Do I do more dangerous things on a daily basis just by getting in my car and driving to an office job? I would bet I do.

I've logged many, many, many hours of pellet cooking. Never once have I had an "oh xxxx" moment. Sometimes it sits in the garage with the door open. I do not leave the house when that's the case, and monitor regularly. When the pit is outdoors and a fairly safe distance from anything, I will not look at it for hours at a time.

I've been lucky to never have an issue so don't think about it much. We all know though there is no issue until there is, and it may be a big one. I guess just mostly common sense with a dusting of crossing your fingers.

[Queball]

I guess I don't get it. ...... It's a controlled fire burning inside a closed metal chamber. ... Unless you don't clean your unit and it's super greasy (Shame on you) or you're cooking a large load of chicken, which as Bentley said you wouldn't leave unattended anyway, what's the big fear, if you have it a few feet away from your house? If you get a grease fire, is it going to melt the metal? If you keep your unit in good shape and it's maintained and running properly, I wouldn't worry about it.

[InThePitBBQ]

I cook low and slow on my PG 500 often overnight or during the day while I'm gone for a few hours. The design of the indirect zone has no radiant heat source unlike most other cookers and I'm comfortable using it that way.

That being said, it get's pushed way out in the open with an extra length of cord to run it away from the house and I clean it out regularly.

My routine when a cook finishes is turning up the heat to 500* and letting it run for 20 minutes in sort of a self cleaning oven mode, I open the doors to allow temperature to drop then back to 200* for another 10 minutes or so before shutting it off.

This allows the auger to cycle all the pellets out of the tube just in case the 500* session got them hot and smoking near the end of the tube by the drop ramp. 

[Queball]

In The Pit,
Doesn't running it each time at 500 degrees burn off all of your seasoning? .... How do you keep it seasoned? I'm sure your pit is super clean from all of that, but seems like a lot of additional cost & effort. ..... Must kick up your pellet usage per cook. At 500 degrees, they burn pretty quick.

[InThePitBBQ]

In The Pit,
Doesn't running it each time at 500 degrees burn off all of your seasoning? .... How do you keep it seasoned? I'm sure your pit is super clean from all of that, but seems like a lot of additional cost & effort. ..... Must kick up your pellet usage per cook. At 500 degrees, they burn pretty quick.

No, in fact the design of the PG 500 forcing all the heat to convect it's way up from zone one to the top of the cooker into zones 2&3 then right and downward into zone 4 traveling past the level of the cooking grate before it can make a right hand turn into the exhaust port to rise and exit it traps every bit of smoke and moisture the combustion process produces.

It's a black hole in there everything is so well seasoned, every inch of the cabinet is well coated and stays that way. In fact you get moisture trails that leak from the door seams down the front of the cabinet face and a little bit of oven cleaner and polish is needed to keep it presentable every 15 cooks or so.

What the high heat burn does do is make cleaning the grates much easier with a fryer brush and semi solid grease caught on the catcher ledge that funnels it all out to the bucket will liquefy and run out or turn to carbon that vacuums right off the ledge.

[Clonesmoker]

I foil my grease trays and have done plenty of cooks at night on my Daniel Boone without any issues.  Normally I keep the temps at 190 or less during that time though. I do clean the pit out every 3-5 cooks. Had the thermocoupler go wacko on my a month ago and it melted the wiring harness, but then again I had it set for 400 and was doing burgers. 

[Kristin Meredith]

Bump -- I thought this was an interesting thread.

[ScottWood]

I do overnight cooks with all three of my pellet cookers all the time and have never had any issues at all.  I will regularly put a long cook item on at about midnight to 1:00am and go to bed.  I am generally up by 7ish on those days and that will be the first time I look at anything.

I do have a couple "best practices" that I do when I am going to do a long, unattended, cook like that.  First I will make sure that I have the cooker fired up at least 90 minutes before I put anything on it, just to make sure that it has stabilized as much as possible and I don't get a temp spike.  Second, I always vacuum out any ash from previous cooks and clean out the drip buckets.  Finally, I always make sure that the hopper is full (this is from forgetting once and having it run out while I slept)

[triplebq]

I have always done long cooks on my pellet and gravity feed units. That is one of the main reason I went with a pellet unit. I usually put my briskets/shoulders on around 10 PM @ 180 and check them between 6 AM - 8 AM. Never had any issues

[Goosehunter51]

Yep, why else would I need WiFi?

[Timbo1010]

I do over night cooks for brisket and pulled pork all the time. But pit sits on concrete patio away from house.  Load it up go to bed. My Gridiron has been very reliable knock on wood.

[Lothar1974]

I have done many over night cooks but I always clean my smoker prior and cook at 190 through the night. I typically go to bed at midnight and get up at 5 AM to check on everything then go back to her 

[cookingjnj]

I have left my pit cooking overnight, and have left it cooking during the day for hours at a time, without any issues.  With that being said, I do ensure I keep the pit clean, I change the foil on the drip pan regularly etc.  I have not done very many high temp cooks.