Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JoeGrilling]

Yup.  Classic flame out.
 [ Invalid Attachment ]

Just curious as to the vast amount of "fines". Pellets OK - typical flame-out. The fines baffle me..Am I missing something?

I didn't see any issue with "fines".  The fire pot was choked with ash up to the air holes.  It was vacuumed out prior to the cook along with the rest of the chamber.  There was also a lot of soot in various places in the cooker like on the sides and in the heat diffuser.  This usually means incomplete combustion.  I saw this before on other test runs.  The hopper used on my build seems to do some of it's temperature regulation by cutting back on the fan speed.  It also cycles the fan during smoke mode.   

[Canadian John]

 
 Keep us posted of your advancements please..I am sure you'll nail it soon..  The resolution is usually simple. Finding the cause can be trying.

[glitchy]

First, I'm a computer geek, not an engineer and might be miles off...with the symptoms you show and describe I wonder if you constructed it too well and there's not enough airflow coming in to burn clean and hot. That might be super easy to test by putting a something thin like a quarter in the corner of the lid and doing another test run. How has the smoke looked coming out the stacks?

[Bentley]

Is this ash or wood fines?

I didn't see any issue with "fines".   

[Bar-B-Lew]

First, I'm a computer geek, not an engineer and might be miles off...with the symptoms you show and describe I wonder if you constructed it too well and there's not enough airflow coming in to burn clean and hot. That might be super easy to test by putting a something thin like a quarter in the corner of the lid and doing another test run. How has the smoke looked coming out the stacks?

Sorta what I was thinking.  The air is not circulating in the grill properly and choked out the fire.  Could it have happened when the lid was open an extended period of time to remove the food?

[JoeGrilling]

Is this ash or wood fines?

I didn't see any issue with "fines".   

It's ash.

[JoeGrilling]

First, I'm a computer geek, not an engineer and might be miles off...with the symptoms you show and describe I wonder if you constructed it too well and there's not enough airflow coming in to burn clean and hot. That might be super easy to test by putting a something thin like a quarter in the corner of the lid and doing another test run. How has the smoke looked coming out the stacks?

Sorta what I was thinking.  The air is not circulating in the grill properly and choked out the fire.  Could it have happened when the lid was open an extended period of time to remove the food?

It did choke out when the first of the two roasts was removed.  It took maybe 10-20 seconds to pull the meat probe, move the roast in an aluminum pan to a table next to me, and close the door.  My ambient probes show an unrecoverable drop in temperature just as the first roast was removed (graph started after three hour smoke attached).  There is plenty of air flow out of the chamber.  I am using two 4"x4" stacks wide open.  My working theory now is the frequent dropping of fan speed during cook and especially during smoke is preventing a good bit of the ash from getting blown out of the fire pot.
 [ Invalid Attachment ]    

[Bar-B-Lew]

What brand and species of pellets did you use?

[JoeGrilling]

What brand and species of pellets did you use?

I used Traeger Hickory.  They are supposed to be pretty clean burning and easy to get on the cheap at the frequent Traeger Costco Road shows.

[Bar-B-Lew]

What brand and species of pellets did you use?

I used Traeger Hickory.  They are supposed to be pretty clean burning and easy to get on the cheap at the frequent Traeger Costco Road shows.

I think Traeger pellets create more ash than some others, but I could be wrong on that.  Some others on here who have documented the types of pellets they used and their assessment of performance may be able to confirm or deny that.  It is quite possible IMO that if you had a heavy ash generating type of pellet on a long cook that it cook generate enough ash to come up over the air flow holes in the fire pot and assist in a flame out like you experienced.  Hopefully, someone else on here can chime in with a type of pellet that generates low ash.  I think cookinpellets may be like that, but I don't remember.

[smokin soon]

Have you spoken with Dennis at Pellet Pro? He may have some useful tips.

[glitchy]

I was thinking air in instead of out, the double stack would be plenty to exhaust, but can it pull enough in sealed up so tight. Definitely worth asking PelletPro like suggested. Do the fans sound like they are working hard at all?

[JoeGrilling]

I was thinking air in instead of out, the double stack would be plenty to exhaust, but can it pull enough in sealed up so tight. Definitely worth asking PelletPro like suggested. Do the fans sound like they are working hard at all?

For a pellet smoker, I always looked at the cabinet as being slightly pressurized by the blower fan on the air inlet and relies less on chimney draw.  The fan seems to be ok.  I put the smoker in shutdown mode after pulling the second roast and the fan went into high speed mode for 15 minutes so nothing is wrong with the fan.

I plan on moving over to a Savannah Stoker controller soon mostly because it is the devil I know.  My Traeger has had one installed on in for close to two years.  It is a pretty simple design in terms of controlling air/fuel.  Fan is on high all the time and it meters the fuel.  Keeping the fan on high may also aids in expelling ash out of the fire pot.   It can be a pain sometimes to setup but I have been already been through that.  Lots of knobs to play with.  The relight feature is pretty nice even though the only times it triggered for me were when I had a blockage in the pellet hopper and running out of pellets.     

[glitchy]

I’d give PelletPro a chance, maybe they have an idea. Anyway, I hope you get this absolutely beautiful creation running like a champ soon! Rooting for you and keep posting about it, useful info for folks that like to get hands on. I’ve never done any metal work and was reading about welders after i saw what you did here.

[JoeGrilling]

I’d give PelletPro a chance, maybe they have an idea. Anyway, I hope you get this absolutely beautiful creation running like a champ soon! Rooting for you and keep posting about it, useful info for folks that like to get hands on. I’ve never done any metal work and was reading about welders after i saw what you did here.

I find welding is a lot of fun but can be frustrating at times.  My first welder was a Miller EconoTIG.  It was very marginal.  My second was a high end Everlast TIG welder.  That machine has been a lot of fun.  My youngest daughter learned to TIG weld on that machine.  She wanted to join the Formula SAE racing team at her college and had to acquire some hands on skill over a summer in order to be accepted on the team.  I told her it would take a few hundred hours of practice to become reasonably competent at it.  She put the time in over the summer after work and was eventually able to lay down a reasonable weld.  She commented that she can't pass something that has been welded now without appreciating weld quality.

I learned the most about welding from "Welding Tips and Tricks" on YouTube.  The owner of the channel is Jody Collier.  He had done nuclear power plant welding and was a welding instructor for Delta Airlines.  I made my daughter watch a lot of his videos.