Clean it out lately???

[chris becker]

So I had dual blow outs  on BOTH of my pellet grills within a month or so. Anyway I thought I would let everyone know that a good cleaning of the burn pot and pellet hopper is a good thing to do before your start of the heavy use season.

This is my ho trod from my TREAGER.

Look close at the burn pot hole. Before I pulled the wires from the control area under the hopper were the controller is I tied a string to the plug end and when I pulled out the hot rod wire that runs through the supply air box I had a line to pull the new hot rod wire through the supply air box backwards to re hookup!

All together and ready to fire up.


Done and ready for action.
My Woodmaster was just 2 screws and pulled the old hot rod out and replaced... about 7 minutes! Great design.

I emptied the pellet hopper out and cleaned out the dust that collects at the auger. Helps  auger performance.
No pics ... pretty basic.
I know we all don't have pellet grills but what ever you have.... never hurts to do a good cleanup every once in awhile.

[teesquare]

great info Chris!

[muebe]

Thanks for the info and pics Chris. This shows you how the ash and high temperatures can corrode certain metals. The end of that igniter rod shows some corrosion. It is important to keep you firepot in the pellet grill or even ash out of your charcoal grill. Especially if you live in humid climates. The moisture mixing with the ash creates the problem.

My Memphis pellet grill has a really cool design on it's firepot. The igniter is located just out of the firepot so it never really sits in the ash or direct flame. The igniter is close enough to cause the pellets to ignite. The firepot is also all stainless. If you look at the picture below you can see just the very tip of the igniter at the center bottom hole...

[Hub]

I do a "spring cleaning" on all my cookers.  For the Traeger and Memphis I remove the main mechanicals, vacuum out ash from places I can't reach on routine cleaning, and then scrape accumulated crud and vacuum that away.  The charcoalers get a rinsing out.  The little gasser gets a scraping and inspection of the burner condition.  Takes me a while but I only have to do it once a year and I combine it with a hosing down of the whole cookshack to blast away the cobwebs, dust, wasp nests and bird poop.  Now that it is finally warm enough to be outside without a coat, I have no excuse for not doing this 

Hub

[smokeasaurus]

My Yoder also just exposes the tip of the hot rod so it doesn't get the full blunt of the fire. I shop vac out my fire pot after every cook and about once a month I will let the hopper run empty and blow out the ash from the auger. It is easy to do on the Yoder cause the Yoder auger is not more than 6 inches long......

[chris becker]

Great designs on that.