Okay, so maybe l'm being paranoid, but earlier
today in a cook, I ran out of pellets without
noticing. I don't know how long it was out, but
dropped 120 degrees F before noticed.
R
didn't think it was a big deal, I refilled my
hopper and went back to yard work. Came
back thirty or so minutes later to a huge fire in
the box, and lots of white smoke pouring out. 1
took out the food, used a fire extinguisher on
the fire, and let everything cool down. Did a
deep clean of everything then plugged it in to
burn off. And now, maybe l'm just paranoid,
the fire box always had a big fire in it. I had
never paid attention before so I don't know if
this is normal. Watching it, the pellets run
continuously until ignited, leaving a large
amount of pellets lit. The auger stops running
once lit. It's set to 350F in this picture. Is this
a normal size fire to have in the box? Is
something broke on the smoker now?
Also including a picture of the amount of
smoke coming out before I put out the initial
fire in case that's helpful or gets you a good
laugh in my expens
by Derek275
4 Comments
You shouldn’t have used an extinguisher unless it was nesseary. Unless the hopper is on fire you just unplug it and keep the lid shut.
When you ran out of pellets you probably ended up with the firepot overfilled with pellets when you restarted the grill.
Please research the proper cleaning methods for the extinguisher type you used before cooking food on the grill again.
If it ran out of pellets, you should have turned it off, reloaded the hopper, then gone through the startup procedure again. Hold the Prime button until you hear a pellet hit the cup, set it on Smoke with the lid open until the cloud of smoke is gone, then set it to the cooking temp and closed the lid.
Probably the smoker dumped too many pellets in at once, trying to get up to temp, then they suddenly all caught.
From my experience this is normal after a cleaning. Once it gets to temp it will go back normal.
The grill doesn’t really know it ran out of pellets. Even if it has an alarm or a pellet sensor, thats for you, not for the controller. At least on my grills, that’s the case. So when you ran it out of pellets, it thinks it’s still dumping pellets and it’s not enough, so it just keeps pumping more in there to try to solve the problem. You should have unplugged it, reprimed it, and started the smoke all over.
That being said, that looks pretty normal. I’d just run it a while, shut it down, clean it back out and cook on it again.